Privatization of water supplies began in England in 1989 under Margaret Thatcher; in the next 10 years, nearly £10 billion went in profits to the new water companies. Today, two giant corporations, Veolia and Suez, control 80% of the international private water market and have some 300 million customers. Protests have broken out in country after country - Bolivia, Argentina, Ghana, South Africa - and the water giants are switching to new markets in China, North America and Europe. Meanwhile well over a billion people still lack access to clean water supplies. This book tells the graphic story behind these facts and figures. Drawing on her own interviews with the poor, the experts and the corporate executives in Latin America, Africa and Europe, the author bring us a story much more complicated that simply public or private provision, or innovative mixes of the two. The ultimate question is this: is water a human right or just another tradable commodity?

This major new reader has been put together by Physicians for Social Responsibility in F inland, a member of IPPNW, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1985. Comprising 70 articles, specially commissioned for this volume and written by lea ding authorities in their field, it provides an unusually wide-ranging examination of the interface betw een warfare and human health and society.

Education is the most important element for growth and prosperity of a nation. India is in the process of transforming itself into a developed nation by 2020. Yet we have 350 million people who need literacy and many more that have to acquire employable skills to suit the emerging modern India and the globe. Children who belong to weaker sections of our society are undernourished, and only a small percentage of them manage to complete 8 years of satisfactory education. We need to think specifically for them. Education is indeed a fundamental right of every Indian child. Can we allow the situation to continue in which millions of these children are forced into life long poverty? The requirement is that the parents should be able to go to any school nearby and admit their children and happily come back home with the confidence that their children will get a good and value-based quality education in that school. – Dr Abdul Kalam in his address to the Nation on the eve of the 58th Independence Day, August 2004.

Structural adjustment programmes are the largest single cause of increased poverty, inequality and hunger in developing countries. This book is the most comprehensive, real-life assessment to date of the impacts of the liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation and austerity that constitute structural adjustment. It is the result of a unique five year collaboration among citizens' groups, developing country governments, and the World Bank itself. Its authors, the members of the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN), reveal the practical consequences for manufacturing, small enterprise, wages and conditions, social services, health, education, food security, poverty and inequality. The stark conclusion emerges: if there is to be any hope for meaningful development, structural adjustment and neoliberal economics must be jettisoned.

Fifty or more developing countries still depend mainly on the tropical commodities or minerals that they produce. But encouraging so many countries to grow coffee, sugar, cotton and other crops has been a disaster. Small farmers get only a tiny share of the final tag on these commodities on supermarket shelves in the North. Prices have collapsed, terms of trade between North and South have widened, and foreign exchange earnings, tax revenues, and economic growth in developing countries have plummeted. Peter Robbins examines how this situation came about, the current trading arrangements and the possible ways forward. He argues that, if developing countries are to measure up to the scale of the disaster facing them, they must take a leaf out of supply side economics, and take the measures to bring supply and demand into a balance that will secure them far higher and more stable prices.

The Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response are a remarkable international initiative aimed at improving the effectiveness and accountability of humanitarian assistance. This new edition of the handbook has been thoroughly revised and updated, taking into account recent developments in humanitarian practice, together with feedback from practitioners in the field, research institutes and cross-cutting experts in protection, gender, children, older people, disabled people, HIV/AIDS and the environment. The revised handbook is the product of an extensive collaborative effort that reflects the collective will and shared experience of the humanitarian community, and its determination to improve on current knowledge in humanitarian assistance programmes.

The trafficking of women and girls for prostitution is big business. This book focuses on the experiences of migrant women and girls who have very little choice or control over their lives. In the context of neo-liberal globalization, they are the new 'slaves' of the contemporary era. The annual worth of this global industry is now estimated to be in the region of $7 billion, making it particularly attractive to organised crime networks. Women are forced to compete for work in conditions of extreme sexual exploitation, often being exposed to risky sexual practices, high levels of HIV, violence and murder. The laws of the marketplace are applied with extreme brutality. This book examines the techniques of recruitment, methods of transportation, and forms of exploitation abroad, and focuses on women's own experiences of migration. It explains the mechanisms of supply and demand and assesses attempts at controlling trafficking and strategies for resistance and change.

This groundbreaking book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work; that migrants who sell sex are passive victims; and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest.

Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' disempowers them. Based on extensive research amongst migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustín, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry. Although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy.