Just Notes

Past Issues

IMPACT OF CORPORATE /CONSUMER RESPONSIBILITY

In this issue: All over the world slaves are forced to work and supply us with the things we buy. Raw materials and commodities like cotton, sugar, iron, gold, diamonds, coffee, timber, fish, cocoa, as well as goods like clothing, shoes, toys, and bricks come from slave labor. These commodities and goods flow into the global product chain and arrive in our homes. Businesses can help stop slavery by taking responsibility and cleaning up their products chains. As consumers, the last step in that product chain, each of us has to take responsibility as well. -Adapted from Free the Slaves

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Mountain Top Removal/Mining

In this issue: It is becoming more and more difficult for the mining companies to sell the benefits of their activities as local communities and support organizations become more and more informed about the negative impacts of mining. Adding to this are the scant or non-existent contributions from taxes and royalties, the undermining of already-weak national institutions, and the creation and use of political and social corruption and illegitimate pressures which weaken the democracies of the region even further. In the face of community opposition, the response is co-optation, threats, militarization, and the use of force. Adapted from Mining Watch

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Migrant Deaths on the Border

In this issue: These walls are not a step toward immigration reform nor have they made the borders more secure. What has happened as a result of the initial walls and increased militarization, is the human rights crisis we see today. Nearly five thousand migrant bodies have been recovered in the deserts, mountains, canals and roads of the United States. Several thousand more migrants remain missing. Organized crime at the border has skyrocketed. The United States accepts no responsibility for its border policies being cause to the carnage. It blames Mexico and its southern neighbors for the rise in crime and death. For the calendar year of 2009 reports indicate it will be a record year for migrant death as almost 100 bodies have already been recovered along the border as of the end of May, 2009. -John Carlos Frey, Gatekeeper Productions

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The Exploitation of Children

In this issue: Trafficking of children would not exist without demand. Often, demand for child prostitution is local, supported (if only implicitly) by social attitudes and cultural practices. But sex tourism also feeds the demand for Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC). Three million children in Africa, Asia, Central Europe, and Latin America are victims of tourists who travel internationally, regionally, or domestically to sexually exploit children. Sexual exploitation of children violates their basic human rights, dignity, and the image of God in every person. - Adapted from UNICEF

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Violence in Mexico

In this issue: More than 1,000 people have been killed in drug violence so far this year; 6,290 people were killed last year - the most specific government accounting yet of drug killings that doubled the 2007 toll. Mexico has spent $6.5 billion over the last two years, on top of its normal public security budget. Killings have spiked in the largest border city, Ciudad Juarez. The city of 1.3 million across from El Paso is now the most worrisome of a number of hotspots. --Adapted from USA today, February 26, 2009

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Millennium Development Goal #3

In this issue: The target of MDG #3 is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015. --Adapted from UN MDGs Report 2008 All eight MDGs touch essential aspects of women's well being; women's advancement is in turn critical for achieving the goals. -- Adapted from UNIFEM.org

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