The Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament has adopted a report regarding legislation that would impose criminal sanctions for the infringement of intellectual property rights. The proposed directive will next go before the April plenary session. A press release is here; the report can be found here.
On March 22, as part of a celebration of World Water Day 2007 and in recognition of the upcoming halfway point in the timeline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis made a statement stressing the concrete steps that can be taken to address the water emergency, being made more daunting by climate change, that currently affects the 700 million people in 43 countries who live below the water-stress threshold of 1,700 cubic meters per person per year.
For a text of the statement, see here.
As part of the support pledged by Junichriro Koizumi, the former Prime Minister of Japan, Japan has given $4.83 million to the United Nations Development Programme to bolster earthquake preparedness in South Asia. Japan’s donation was made specifically to the Earthquake Risk Reduction and Recovery Preparedness Programme that targets India, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan and aims to support regional cooperation in disaster risk reduction and recovery and to strengthen the capacities of nations to prepare for and recover from earthquakes.
For more information, see here.
On March 21, International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Council of Europe published a list of 40 measures to reduce racism in and through school education. The Council recommended that governments begin to implement these measures immediately.
For more information, see here. The list is also available here.
Camp sites for internally displaced persons in Sudan are quickly nearing maximum capacity as people continue to flee the ongoing conflict in Darfur. The UN estimates that 80,000 people have fled the Darfur region since January. The UN is seeking new camp sites to shelter internally displaced persons, and has already identified one new site near the close-to-capacity Zam Zam camp.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=21926&Cr=sudan&Cr1=
Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, has condemned the hanging of Taha Yasin Ramadan, a former Vice President to Saddam Hussein. A short press release, issued today, can be found here.
