(Photo: Inesc)

Source: Inesc

Thousands of people in favelas (shanty towns) in Rio de Janeiro are being evicted from their homes as Brazil prepares for the 2016 Olympic Games, and the same is happening in other cities that will host matches during the 2014 World Cup. According to the lawyer Roberto Benedito Barbosa, an activist in the Sao Paulo Union of Housing Movements (UMM), this is being done "to move the poor farther and farther away from rich neighbourhoods”. This matter has already reached the United Nations where it is giving cause for concern.

Presentation of the demand before the OIT. (Photo: Chilean parliament)

Sources: CENDA, Radio Universidad de Chile.

This week Chilean unions and social organizations made a report to the International Labour Organization (ILO) office in Santiago denouncing private sector pension funds for discrimination against women, a practice that had been documented in a study by the Centro de Estudios Nacionales de Desarrollo Alternativo (CENDA, the focal point of Social Watch in Chile).

(Photo: African Descent Summit)

Sources: Cumbre Mundial de los y las Afrodescendientes, El Telégrafo de Ecuador, AIM Digital, REL-UITA.

Eight hundred representatives from organizations in 44 countries in America, Africa, Europe and Asia attended the first World Summit for People of African Descent, which was held in La Ceiba, Honduras. They called for the creation of a permanent forum for the affairs of people of African descent in the sphere the international community.

The conference, which came to an end last Sunday, also resolved to set up "the International Coordination Committee of the World Summit for People of African Descent as a body to coordinate, monitor, mobilize, make proposals, organize and follow up on agreements and action, and to exert political influence” in the name of civil society organizations in these communities throughout the world.

Jatropha plantation in Mali. (Photo: Eco-Carbone)

Source: Third World Network

As foreign capitals and hedge funds continue to make more forays into Africa's land resources, a study has unearthed some surprising findings about the identity of some of the principal investors, according to research by the US-based think-tank Oakland Institute.

Swathes of land in Africa are being snapped up by investors and hedge funds, often at the expense of local inhabitants, with promises of benefits that may not materialise, wrote journalist Chee Yoke Heong, researcher with the Third World Network, in an article about the report published by Third World Resurgence.

Palestinians stranded at the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. (Photo: Asmaa Waguih/IRIN)

Sources: Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, UN News Centre.

Eleven Egyptian human rights organizations condemned this week the Israeli attacks against the civil population of Gaza and against Egyptian military personnel in the last days, and demanded that the U.N. Security Council conduct "a fair investigation" with the aim to "bring those responsible to trial". One of the signatory groups is the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement, focal point of Social Watch.