Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi. (Photo: UNCTAD)

"The primary role of the Investment Division of UNCTAD should be to provide to developing countries alternatives to the unbalanced provisions of international investment treaties" say 240 organizations from over 150 countries in a letter to Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, secretary general of the UN body specializing in trade and development.
The signatories worry about "the growing restrictions on policy space resulting from the investment protection rules".

Fracking will have disastrous consequences for the environment, the population and the energetic sustainability of Latin America and this development cannot be allowed.

In connection with the World Day against Fracking (Global Frackdown) Latin-American civil society organizations have pointed at the irreversible impacts of fracking at the territories and populations of these regions by the exploitation of hydrocarbons.

“Making Sovereign Financing and Human Rights Work” is the title of a book recently published by Hart Publishing, Oxford (an Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing) and that that I co-edited together with Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky. Our initial interest in this topic was sparked by the daily hardship of millions who indirectly suffer due to the realities of current global financial environments. After we started our research for this book project several years ago, we were surprised to find out that apart from some isolated academic articles almost nothing had been written on the issue of how sovereign financing affect the individual’s enjoyment of human rights. However, we have not only been interested in this relationship, but mostly in how to make sovereign financing and human rights work.

Students in Santiago. (Photo: Hans Peters/Flickr/CC)

The proposed Budgetary Law 2015 does not contemplate significant changes in the current structure of the public financing of higher education, says an analysis by the Centre of National Studies of Alternative Development, CENDA, and the Institute of Sciences Alejandro Lipschutz, ICAL. These think-tanks worry that resources designated to "subsidize demand" have increased significantly but that doesn't change "the commercialization of education and the role of profit-making in it". Michelle Bachelet was elected president on a platform that included free high level education and therefore the study finds "surprising" that the proposed budget "repeats and aggravates exactly that process of privatization that generated the current situation".

Nabeel Rajab, the President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), Director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR) and Deputy Secretary General of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), was summoned on 1 October 2014 to attend an investigation at the Criminal Investigation Directorate, specifically the General Directorate of Anti-corruption and Economic and Electronic Security. The investigation session lasted about 45 minutes and focused on two tweets that the authorities claim have offended the Ministry of Interior.

More than 100 organisations call for the immediate, unconditional release of detained human rights defender Nabeel Rajab, arrested on 1 October 2014 in Bahrain.