Participants at the 2012 International AIDS Conference criticized the prevailing discrimination against sex workers in the US and other social groups world wide. The conference, held in Washington DC from 21-27 July, saw the pledging of additional funding to fight HIV/AIDS by international donors, emphasizing the need for further research to combat the epidemic, reported Eurostep web site.

Photo: Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

In an indication of elected representatives’ apathy to people’s causes, 129 of the 224 legislators in the Indian State of Karnataka have never posed a single question during the Legislature sessions held last year, revealed the Karnataka Social Watch Report 2012, according to The Hindu newspaper.

Panel on Defining the Future of Trade. (Photo: TAG-Org)

A number of civil society organizations have strongly objected to the panel of “WTO stakeholders” formed recently by WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy and tasked to examine and analyze challenges to global trade in the 21st century, reported journalist Kanaga Raja on the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) news service.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon briefs the General Assembly. (UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz)

The United Nations is preparing for a post-2015 Development Agenda to replace the Millennium Development Goals, with an advisory panel announced last week and a possible Development Summit in 2015, wrote Martin Khor, executive director of South Centre, in his most recent column for The Star, one of the leading Malaysian newspapers.

Burning of rice residues after harvest in Punjab, India. (Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT/Flickr/CC)

At least 25 Asian and international civil society organizations are calling to “act swiftly” to avoid “the impending disaster” and to “regain our momentum and defeat the system by targeting the source” of the global environmental crisis. Some of the groups that signed the appeal are the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform (Monlar, Sri Lanka), La Via Campesina and Focus on the Global South.