Imposed economic and social policies raise human rights questions

By David Bacon

The disaster that is the ongoing occupation of Iraq is much more than the war that plays nightly across U.S. television screens. The violence of grinding poverty, exacerbated by economic sanctions after the first Gulf War, has been deepened by the U.S. invasion. Every day the economic policies of the occupying authorities—which remain in effect despite the appointment of an interim goverment—create more hunger among Iraq's working people, transforming them into a pool of low-wage, semi-employed labor, desperate for jobs at almost any price.

What the California grocery war means for the future of labor and health insurance

By Steven Pitts

South Africa’s water policy results in cutoffs, evictions and disease

By Dale T. McKinley

Water privatization imperils low-income communities in the United States

By Juliette Beck

When most people think of families without water, they picture people in impoverished countries in Africa or Latin America. But right here in the United States, dozens of communities are struggling for access to clean, affordable water. In 2001, the city of Detroit introduced an aggressive debt collection plan that threatened to suspend water services if residents could not pay the quarterly charges. Within a year after the plan was introduced, more than 40,000 residents of Detroit had their water cut off. Today, many of these families—mostly low-income and black—are still without water, relying on the kindness of neighbors willing to share their hoses.

Biopiracy and the privatization of global resources

By Hope Shand

The primary stewards of the world’s biodiversity are the farmers, Indigenous peoples and local communities, primarily in the global South, who developed, nurtured and continue to use these resources today. Rural poor people in the global South rely on biological products (i.e., derived from plants, animals and microorganism) for an estimated 85 to 90 percent of their livelihood needs. More than 1.4 billion rural people depend on farm-saved seeds and local plant breeding as their primary seed source. More than three-quarters of the world’s population rely on traditional medicines for their primary health needs.