By Areej Abuqudairi AMMAN  (IPS) — Watching videos and pictures on social media of the advance of the Islamic State (IS) inside Syria made it all seem far from reality to Iraqi Marvin Nafee. “We did not believe it,” said the 27-year-old, “it seemed so imaginary.” Only months later, his home city Mosul fell to […]

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi HARARE  (IPS) — Zimbabwe has lost 12 billion dollars in illicit financial flows over the last three decades and experts say this illegal practice is perpetuating social inequalities and poverty in this southern African nation. A September report by the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZIMVAC) estimates that 63 percent of Zimbabweans are […]

By Beena Sarwar BOSTON (IPS) — Two years ago, gunmen shot dead Farooq Kahloun’s newly married son Saad Farooq, 26, in an attack that severely injured Kahloun, his younger son Ummad, and Saad’s father-in-law, Choudhry Nusrat. Saad died on the spot. In Pakistan after travelling from his home in New York for the wedding, Nusrat […]

By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS  (IPS) — When the international pledging conference to rebuild a devastated Gaza ended in Cairo over the weekend – the third such conference in less than six years – the lingering question among donors was: is this the last of it or are there more assaults to come? U.N. Secretary-General […]

By Ignatius Banda BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (IPS) – Pregnant at 15, Samantha Yakubu* is in a fix. The 16-year-old boy she claims was responsible for her pregnancy has refused to accept her version of events, insisting that he was “not the only one who slept with her”. Now Yakubu has dropped out of school and, like […]

By Amantha Perera COLOMBO  (IPS) — The last time there was mud on his village roads was about a year ago, says Murugesu Mohanabavan, a farmer from the village of Karachchi, situated about 300 km north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. “Since last October we have had nothing but sun, all day,” the 40-year-old father […]

By Jonathan Rozen ULAANBAATAR (IPS) —Ulziikhutag Jigjid, 49, is a member of a 10-person group in the Khan-Uul district on the outskirts of Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, which is producing brooms, chairs, containers, and other handmade products from discarded soda and juice containers. “In the early morning we collect raw materials from the street, and then […]

By A. D. McKenzie PARIS(IPS) — The Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave opened many people’s eyes to the barbarity of slavery and fuelled some discussion about that period in world history. But the film is just one of the many initiatives to “break the silence” around the 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade […]

By Khaled Alashqar GAZA CITY (IPS) — “When the [Israeli] shelling started, I gathered up my family and headed for what I though was a safe place, like a school, but then that became overcrowded and lacked sanitation, so we ended up in the grounds of the hospital.” Islam Abu Sheira from Beit Hanoun, a […]

By Ashfaq Yusufzai PESHAWAR, Pakistan (IPS) —Between government efforts to wipe out insurgents from Pakistan’s northern, mountainous regions, and the Taliban’s own campaign to exercise power over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the real victims of this conflict are often invisible.Walking among the rubble of their old homes, or sitting outside makeshift shelters in […]