Fujimori sentenced In April, a court in Lima sentenced Alberto Fujimori, former Peruvian president, to 25 years in prison. The court judged him “indirectly” guilty of two massacres, in which 25 people were murdered, and of two abductions. The massacres were carried out by a paramilitary group named Colina, and the court ruled that such a group could not have been formed without the knowledge of the commander in chief. Therefore, Fujimori is deemed responsible for the group’s actions. He is the first democratically elected Latin American president to be condemned in his own country for violating human rights. Fujimori was Peru’s president from 1990 to 2000. Ovver a hundred witnesses were questioned since his trial began in December 2007. He was already found guilty in 2007 of ordering a burglary and the theft of documents. (cir)

Corruption risk at the World Bank The methods the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank affiliate, uses to fight corruption are completely inadequate. That is the conclusion of an internal report by the Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG). The IEG uses standards similar to those applied to assess fraud prevention in the corporate world. One of the report’s authors told the Wall Street Journal that the risk of abuse of IDA grants is increased by the fact that the Bank’s traditional control systems are not designed to address fraud and corruption. The IDA grants loans on particularly favourable terms. Its lending volume for the period from July 2008 to June 2011 is $ 41.6 billion. There has been repeated criticism of the World Bank over recent years for not taking corruption seriously. (cir)

Pfizer settles law case in Nigeria Pfizer, the pharma multinational, has settled a law case with the Nigerian state of Kano. The corporate giant was accused of illegally testing medication on 200 children in 1996. Eleven test persons died, and 181 fell sick. Pfizer agreed to pay the Kano government several million dollars. The BBC reported the funds will serve to compensate the families affected. The anti-biotic Trovan was tested during a meningitis epidemic, which killed 12,000 children. According to Pfizer, that was also the cause of the death of the test persons. Pfizer insists that parents and the state government had approved of the tests. (cir)

Corporations face apartheid trial In April, a New York court allowed actions for damages against corporations that collaborated with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Apartheid victims filed the complaints, arguing that the firms must have known their products were being used to oppress black people. The automobile manufacturers Daimler, Ford and General Motors, as well as the arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, will now have to face the accusations. Similar actions against banks, Switzerland’s UBS among them, were not allowed. This decision met with criticism from the Apartheid Debt and Reparations Campaign (ADR), which considers the banks' collaboration with the regime to have been proven. (cir)

G8 agriculture ministers meet for the first time The ministers of agriculture from the G8 countries met in mid-April for the first time to discuss the global food crisis. They wrote in their final declaration that “agriculture and food security are at the core of the international agenda”.
The ministers advocate the recognition of farmers as the key players in the agricultural sector. Moreover, they demand greater coherence in the policy areas that impact food security. Civil-society organisations, however, expressed disappointment at the meeting’s results, saying that, whilst it is positive that the G8 is considering the food crisis in the midst of the financial crisis, it had once again missed an opportunity to review its own policies.
The European Union recently reintroduced export subsidies for milk. EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel defends subsidies for milk exports to Africa by claiming there are few dairy farmers there who could be affected, but this assumption is refuted in a current study by the Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN). The chair of the United Working Group for Small Farmer Agriculture, a German lobby organisation, Friedrich Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf, added: “What’s completely nonsensical is that the EU’s milk surplus is based not on its own feed resources, but on feed imports from third world countries.” The practice in developing countries of cultivating animal feed for export decreases the availability of agricultural land for the production of food. (cir)