UN Mine Action Service Launches Powerful PSA
By Joe Kovacs, WorldNetDaily
It's a soccer-mom's worst nightmare. Their all-American daughters are playing a match in bucolic suburbia. One of the girls on the blue team scores a goal then steps on a landmine and is blown up. Chaos ensues. It's not the lead-in to the latest gore-fest cop show on television; it's a UN public service announcement (PSA) for which US networks are refusing to donate time. -- Marca Bradt
http://www.adrants.com/2005/02/un-mine-action-service-launches.php http://www.stoplandmines.org/slm/index.html

The African Cliff
By Alex Steffen, WorldChanging
WorldChanging's Alex Steffen posted a stark graph from the '2005 Economic Report of the President' that captures the devastation wrought by HIV/AIDS, poverty, and oppression in Africa. The image shows how life expectancies in five African nations seem to fall off a precipitous cliff around the 1980s. But as Ethan Zuckerman points out in a thoughtful response, five countries don't constitute Africa, and dire statistics often contribute to a sense of hopelessness regarding the continent. He uses UN reports to tally the data from 44 sub-Saharan countries, finding that in more than half, life expectancy has actually increased. -- Hannah Lobel
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002265.html
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethan/2005/03/04#a794

Female Genital Mutilation Widespread in North Iraq
By Golnaz Esfandiari, Albion Monitor
More than 60 percent of the women in northern Iraq have been 'circumcised.' This staggering figure was the result of a survey conducted by Wadi, a German organization posted in northern Iraq. According to the World Health Organization, female genital mutilation (FGM) is often referred to as circumcision and involves partial to total amputation of external female genitalia, including the pleasure center of the clitoris. A litany of physical and emotional scars ensues after the mutilation as well as a heightened risk of HIV and other potentially fatal health complications. An estimated 130 million females worldwide have undergone this procedure and each year about two million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM. -- Marca Bradt
http://albionmonitor.com/0502a/femalegenitalmutilation3.html