In El Salvador in 1998, the Inter-American Development Bank, a branch of the World Bank, approved a loan for a reform program directed at the nation’s water sector. The loan focused on a program based on decentralization and privatization of El Salvador’s water systems. 36 million dollars of the loan was designated specifically for the promotion of private sector participation in the decentralization program.
In the 1980’s the Bhutanese government saw the Lhotshampa people, natives of Southern Bhutan, as a political threat. The government began to discriminate against them, and in the early 1990’s, 100,000 people from Southern Bhutan fled their country, fearing for their safety. The Bhutan refugees resided in United Nations-sponsored refugee camps in Nepal.
Curacao is an island country in the southern Caribbean Sea, near the Venezuelan coast. Part of the Dutch Antilles, the country of about 150,000 was formerly a Dutch colony. In a shift away from colonialism, the islands of the Antilles were given a degree of self-government while still linked together as a unit under the Netherlands.
The Naga people have been entrenched in a largely violent struggle with the Indian government since the 19th century in an attempt to unify and secure the independence of areas in northeast India that are primarily populated by members of the Naga community. The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN)--the leading Naga rebel group--declared a ceasefire with the Indian government in 1997 in order to begin peace talks, but little progress has been made since that point.
Qatar is a small independent emirate in the Middle East, north of Saudi Arabia, that has been ruled by the Al-Thani family since the mid-1800s. Nearly 850,000 people are citizens of Qatar, though thousands more are immigrant workers, who make up three-quarters of the workforce. 96% of the population lives in the cities, and the most populated city is the capital city of Doha.
Three men sentenced to death in Ohio staged a twelve-day hunger strike in January 2011 with the goal of gaining the same living conditions as the 100 other prisoners on Ohio's Death Row. The men, Keith Lamar, Jason Robb, and Carlos Sanders were sentenced to death for their roles in the 1993 Lucasville Uprising, the deadly and longest-lasting prison revolt in United States history. For the last seventeen years, the three men, along with James Were, who was also involved in the Uprising, had been held in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement. They had been barred from access to
In early March of 2006, two proposed captive dolphin facilities received government authorization to begin planning their parks. The two facilities, Dolphin Cove and Dolphin Discovery, still needed to fulfill various requirements to open for business; the government permission only extended through the building stage of the project. One condition for eventual business was a statement from the Department of Environment that the facilities would not cause serious or irreversible environmental damage, and that the facilities would have controls in place to ensure as much.
In May 2003, a breakdown in bargaining occurred between the Association of Faroese Trade Unions (Færøernes Arbejderforeninger) and the Federation of Faroese Employers (Færøernes Arbejdsgiverforening). The Association of Faroese Trade Unions represented five unskilled workers’ trade unions. Bargaining ended when the trade unions rejected a wage increase of 6.8% over the next two years. The trade unions wanted an 18% wage increase over the next two years, as well as an annual increase in early retirement payments. After a compromise could not be reached, 12,000 of the
In April of 1899, employees of the Niagara Silver Company organized a new union branch: The Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers, and Brassworkers' International Union of North America, Local No. 155. About 100 workers of the company were part of the union, with fellow employee George Furniss as President. W. A. Jameson, manager of the Niagara Steel Company, appeared before his employees on May 19 and advised against membership in the union.
Starting in 2001, rebels supporting the leader François Bozize attempted coups to overthrow President Ange-Félix Patassé in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. The political unrest during this time resulted in a drop of the country’s economy. The government fell behind in payments to many civil servants, such as teachers, and made a priority of paying soldiers to fight the rebels. The teachers demanded that the government pay them nine months of their salaries from the total of twenty-three months in arrears.
Prior to 1997, students in Malta received a full stipend to attend a University or post-secondary school. In 1997, as a portion of the full budget reform meant to decrease the large deficit, the Labour party of Malta proposed the reduction of the student stipend from a yearly, incremental stipend to a flat Lm50 per month. This proposed reform would also make 50% of the stipend be paid in the form of a loan, as opposed to a grant (with the exception of students attending the Institute of Health Care).
In 1959, French, British, Italian, and German interests established a mining and steel-making consortium- Societe Anonyme des Mines de Fer de Mauritanie (MIFERMA)- with the purpose of extracting and exporting resources from Mauritania. MIFERMA became a dominant force in Mauritania’s industrialization. International press celebrated the new iron ore mines as Mauritania’s entry into the 20th century.
Between July 2007 and June 2010, workers of LIAT Airlines, which is based in Antigua and Barbuda, protested against their employers for better wages and holiday pay. The campaign was a back and forth struggle between LIAT Airlines and multiple Caribbean governments on one side, and the flight attendants and pilots of LIAT Airlines on the other. The employees relied mainly on strikes and sick-ins throughout the campaign whenever the authorities did not meet their demands.
By 1989, Bulgaria’s Communist Party Leader Todor Zhivkov had ruled the country for 35 years through a constitutionally sanctioned single-party government. Zhivkov and the communist Politburo had always quickly repressed any opposition and independent unions or organizations were illegal in the country. In the late 1980s Zhivkov and his regime had also begun an assimilation program for Muslims and ethnic Turks, which had forced nearly 300,000 Turks to leave Bulgaria in 1989 to avoid persecution. At the same time, however, reforms were sweeping through Eastern Europe as prot
In 2007, a group of New York University (NYU) students called Students Creating Radical Change decided to campaign for disclosure and transparency. They started forming the group Take Back NYU! (TBNYU) and started in October with an event called "What is NYU Hiding?" They followed it shortly with another event, called "What is NYU Hiding in Abu Dhabi?"
New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific, contains approximately one quarter of the world's nickel resources, and the nickel mining industry has long been a central aspect of the small island's economy. In 2005, unions on the island caused repeated disruptions to the nickel supply chain, some in protest of working conditions, others as the result of a national divide between those who wanted further mineral resource development in the country’s north, and still others who wanted development to be focused in the south.
After over seven years of a harsh and bloody war between Algeria’s socialist National Liberation Front (FLN) and the French military, Algeria had finally claimed its independence from France in 1962. However, internal turmoil among the state’s leaders threatened to disrupt the country’s peace. At a FLN party congress in late May 1962, one of the leading FLN members, Ahmed Ben Bella, convinced the FLN to vote out the government-in-exile, the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), and its leader Ben Youssef Ben Khedda.
On April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon, a drilling rig located in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded. The explosion killed 11 individuals who worked on the rig and resulted in an underwater oil leak which authorities were unable to plug for three months. The oil washed ashore across the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, threatening wildlife and local economy alike.
After the United States dropped the first atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the initial shock of the weapons’ destructive power wore off, many countries became interested in developing electricity based off of the nuclear technology. Along with the exciting new possibilities that always accompany new technology, nuclear fission carried with it a whole host of dangerous challenges as well.
In 2002, El Salvador was under intense pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to privatize its healthcare system, which had up until that point been controlled by the government and available to all legally employed Salvadorans. The system, while admittedly seriously lacking in the services that it provided to the typical Salvadoran, had shown marked improvements over the past few years. A widely popular 1999 strike by the ISSS, the healthcare workers union, had prevented the country from privatizing healthcare and since that point services had graduall
Gibraltar is a small piece of land on the southwestern tip of Spain, yet has been the territory of Britain since the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Spain has been attempting to get Gibraltar back since then, causing tension between the two countries. Gibraltar wished to remain British.
The Isle of Man (also known as Mann) is an island British Crown Dependency, located between Great Britain and Ireland. On March 30, 2008, a ban on smoking in public places came into effect. This ban also included smoking inside the Victoria Road Prison in the capital city of Douglas, in an effort to “provide clean air” for prison staff and inmates. The Department of Home affairs also hoped to encourage the prisoners, most of whom smoked, to break their nicotine addiction.
At the beginning of April 1961, after nearly seven years of war in Algeria as France tried to maintain its control there, French President Charles de Gaulle announced that he would begin negotiations with the Algerian nationalists and soon relinquish control of the colony. At the time France had approximately 500,000 soldiers stationed in Algeria and very few remaining at home. Several of the generals in Algeria, however, did not want to concede to the Algerian nationalists.
Wallis and Futuna is an overseas department of France situated in the Pacific, 225 miles west of Samoa and 300 miles northeast of Fiji. The islands’ population stands at around 15,000 people. Between February and June of 1994, the Force Ouvrière union on Wallis and Futuna organized strikes for a variety of demands chiefly dealing with the high cost of living and the lack of a public educational option in primary school.
Several hundred Indian workers of the British construction firm, Carillion, started demonstrations in Anguilla on June 26 and 27, 2007. They demanded better wages and working conditions because they could not live on $180 a month and they were concerned about the quality of the food, water, and medical attention that the company gave them. Later that week, many Anguillans came out to demonstrations to express their support.
