Throughout the entire region the environment continues to face growing pressures. It comes from a growing range of converging issues like urban expansion; destruction of native forests; rapidly expanding populations; growing inequality and poverty; water, soil and air pollution; and the international inaction on climate change.
The current famine in southern Somalia should have come as no surprise. Aid agencies have been warning of the consequences of the worst drought to hit East Africa in thirty years. Republished from The Conversation.
When I was a child, and the internet was just a bizarre U.S. military experiment, I looked hopefully to computers as a possible future solver of all things factual.
Alex Schlotzer spent the weekend at the Climate Action Summit as someone committed to seeing political action taken on climate change. More specifically he was there in his voluntary role as coordinator of the Brimbank Climate Action Network (BrimbankCAN). This is his account of the weekend.
The recently appointed panel to determine how grassroots aid funding will be spent in New Zealand is being criticised as poorly qualified and politically driven.
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) has said uneven indexation increases to pensions aimed at meeting increases in the cost of living will see more than 300,000 unemployed slip further into poverty.
By Alex Schlotzer: Social media is the new political battle ground. We saw it during the federal election and the recent Victorian state election. Political parties around the world have quickly jumped on the band-wagon, especially after Obama’s overwhelming success using it during his election campaign. However with its meteoric growth in use and...
The Australian Human Rights Commission today released its 2010 Christmas Island immigration detention report which recommends an end to mandatory detention and offshore processing on the islands.
Aid agency Oxfam Australia yesterday welcomed Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd's proposal to give 0.15 per cent of Australia’s gross national income to least developed countries, saying the move would benefit "the poorest of the poor."
Kevin Rennie, writing in Global Voices, finds the distraction of the footy finals season and the negotiations over the first federal hung parliament in Australia in seventy years as the reason the mainstream media in the country has delivered scant attention to the real reasons behind the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit in New...
Indonesian companies tend to avoid directing their corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds to water and sanitation projects, preferring instead to provide finance for more short term programs, a recent Indonesian conference has heard.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addressed a UN health conference in Melbourne by videolink which concluded yesterday saying countries were falling short of some of their health goals with women's and children's health the main focus.
A UN human rights committee has said discrimination against Aborigines is "embedded" in Australian society, criticising what it describes as the unacceptable level of social disadvantage experienced by Indigenous people in the country.
Melbourne youth workers are calling on the Brumby government to release a long-overdue policy framework that would bolster supports for vulnerable young people
There's a reason Tony Abbott didn't show up to the announcement of the Coaliton's national broadband policy. Lets face it, commentators and pundits have been too polite to describe it for what it is — a sh!t policy.
While water activists and environmentalists have hailed the recent decision by the UN General Assembly to grant access to safe water and adequate sanitation as a human right, Australia and New Zealand followed the United States, Canada and the UK in abstaining from the vote.
Reading back over my very first article for theangle.org it's interesting to note the changes (or lack of them) to Australia’s policies regarding treatment of asylum seekers.
On 9 April 2010, the Minister of Immigration Chris Evans announced changes to Australian immigration processing, whereby the processing of asylum applications for both Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers was stopped.
Melbourne-based writer, blogger and activist Kevin Rennie originally wrote this article on an East Timor solution for refugees for an international audience as part of the European Journalism Centre's Th!nk3 blogging project. We reprint it here with his kind permission.
ADB Assistant Chief Economist Juzhong Zhuang, editor of a new book on inequality and inclusive growth in Asia, says rising growth rates in Asia have masked rising inequality, leading to two faces of Asia - one shining and the other suffering.
when you look at the statistic that refugee and humanitarian visas make up just 0.03 percent of all visas granted last year, you wonder why this issue has become so politicized and such a sticky policy issue leading into the election.
The Australian Government has signalled its intention to assist the development of its near neighbours' water infrastructure funding a multi-million dollar program to improve people's access to an adequate water supply and sanitation facilities.
In a conference with ramifications in the Asia Pacific region, USAID administrator Rajiv Shah has called on the UN's World Food Program to show leadership in the global battle against hunger.
With the issue of overseas aid emerging as an election issue in Australia (as indicated in an earlier Th!nk3 post) the tabloid attacks/exposé on government expenditure and a series of electoral forums on making poverty history have begun.
Theangle's Managing Editor takes us through the value of the iPhone and its many uses for activists and citizen journalists.
A UN-sponsored report has listed nine recommendations for world Governments and NGOs to reach Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on sanitation.
I’ve written a lot about technology and how it can be used for social and progressive change.
Developing countries, including those in the Asia Pacific region, require increased funding and community cooperation to ensure schools have access to clean water and adequate sanitation facilities, according to a new UNICEF report.
The Australian Government's decision to end restrictions on uranium to Russia will damage its credibility as a country dedicated to ending nuclear proliferation, the Australian Greens have said.
Government science organisation Geoscience Australia has said it is unclear if mining near the town of Kalgoorlie was responsible for yesterday's magnitude 5.0 earthquake.
In the first of a series, theangle's managing editor Alex Schlotzer shares tips and tricks for the use of photo sharing sites for the activist and citizen reporter. This article first appeared in an April 16 post in Alex's blog.
A growing population and increasing industrialisation have been listed as the chief threats to water supply in the Asia Pacific, according to a UN-sponsored report released last month.
By Fausto Belo Ximenes: I do agree to a certain degree that the support from the international community has been very limited. Yet it is paramount importance to understand the nature of the so-called international community and to what extent it could be influential in the world politics. The international community functions largely [if...
Two researchers from Western Australia's Murdoch University have combined to dispel the myths and misconceptions surrounding those seeking asylum in Australia.
By Rich Bowden: More than twenty percent of the five thousand children who die every year in East Timor, do so through preventable diseases caused by poor sanitation and drinking unclean water, according to a new supplementary report released by aid agency WaterAid Australia. The NGO said despite poor or non-existent sanitation facilities being...
By Rich Bowden: On the eve of key climate talks in Copenhagen, an independent Pacific think tank has called for world leaders attending the conference to hear the region’s plight in battling rising sea levels. With the low-lying Pacific nations struggling to adapt to a changing environment brought about by climate change, the Pacific...
Lae city in Papua New Guinea’s eastern Morobe Province is struggling to cope with another outbreak of cholera.
We who hate the dehumanizing rhetoric are on course to lose the struggle for ‘hearts and minds.’
A regional emergency response to yesterday's tsunami has swung into place as the death toll rises to 140, with many missing.
Since its birth the fledgling nation of East Timor has experienced poverty and hardships.
Reports of death and destruction in Samoa as a massive earthquake in the South Pacific triggered a tsunami, killing at least three and injuring 50.
Calls for Australian PM Kevin Rudd to use the G20 to help protect poorer countries from the recent economic crisis.
Developed Pacific countries such as Australia should do more to help combat the "horrific" maternal health crisis in PNG.
By Rich Bowden Img: Heather Saville at book launch. Credit: QSA Quaker Service Australia (QSA), one of Australia’s most highly respected charities, recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with the publication of the book Friends in deed: 50 years of Quaker Service Australia. APMG spoke to the QSA’s Heather Saville on the Service’s aid operations...
By Rich Bowden Img: Carteret Atoll. Credit: NASA A joint Australian study has predicted that up to 75 million in the Asia Pacific region will be made climate refugees in the next 40 years. The report, a joint project between aid organisation Oxfam Australia and think tank The Australia Institute, warns opinion leaders that...
