U Thein Oo. (Photo: Labor.net)

Despite the political reforms that include the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2010 and the multiparty by-elections last April, the Burma Lawyers’ Council (BLC, national focal point of Social Watch) warns there has been little substantive change so far. Doubts on the sincerity of the transition to democracy persist.

Commission on Status of Women opens its current session. (UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras)

Bulgarian government lacks of bodies in charge of regulating and monitoring gender equality, warned this month the civil society delegation to the 52nd Session of the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women. The NGOs were represented by the Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation (focal point of Social Watch) and the Gender Alternatives Foundation, with the support of the Alliance for Protection against Domestic Violence.

In its last regular session this month in Pretoria, the General Council of the Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights (EMDHR, national focal point of Social Watch) took note of the worsening humanitarian, political and economic crises in the African country, and underlined that every effort should be exerted to bring about durable solutions for those who need protection.

Familiar agriculture in Lagoa das Flores, Bahia, Brazil. (Photo:jhelfny/Flickr/CC)

A recently published review paper compares the differences in greenhouse gas contributions between the industrial and agro-ecological production systems and finds that the first one contributes significantly to global warming, representing a large majority of total agriculture-related emissions, reported Lim Li Ching, of the Third World Network (TWN), on the Biosafety Information Centre web page.

A new study entitled “GMO myths and truths” challenges the conventional wisdom that “critics of genetically engineered food are anti-science”, reported Earth Open Source. The study produced by Dr Michael Antoniou, Dr John Fagan and Claire Robinson presents a large body of peer-reviewed scientific and other authoritative evidence of hazards to health and the environment posed by genetically engineered crops and organisms (GMOs).