A top UN official Sept. 3 urged Israel to ease its two-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip to allow materials to repair damaged water and sanitation systems. To drive his point home, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the territory Maxwell Gaylard led his enterouge to the edge of a sewage-polluted reservoir in Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City. "The deterioration and breakdown of water and sanitation facilities in Gaza is compounding an already severe and protracted denial of human dignity in the Gaza Strip," said Gaylard in a press statement.

A Sept. 2 report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime boasts that 800,000 Afghan farmers have stopped cultivating poppies—but warns that drug lords are forging stronger ties with both insurgent groups and corrupt officials. The UNODC report, "Afghan Opium Survey 2009," documents a decline in opium cultivation in Afghanistan for the second consecutive year, dropping by as much 22% since 2008. Prices for opiates are also at a 10-year low. But, signaling improved efficiency, heroin production was down only 10%.

Before the June 28 coup, some in the Honduran left and grassroots movements had looked to the scheduled Nov. 29 general elections as a chance to break the monopoly on power held for decades by the Liberal Party (PL) and National Party (PN). Currently the two parties control 95% of electoral posts and government positions; of the 15 Supreme Court justices, eight are from the PL and seven from the PN. But the social movement was divided: union leader Carlos Humberto Reyes was registered as independent presidential candidate, while legislative deputy César Ham was running as the candidate of the small leftist Democratic Unification (UD) party.

On Aug. 25 the US State Department announced that it had temporarily stopped issuing visas to Hondurans in an effort to pressure the de facto Honduran government to allow President Zelaya's return to office; there will be exceptions for emergencies and for people who are immigrating to the US. On Aug. 26 US deputy assistant secretary for Andean, Brazilian and Southern Cone affairs Christopher McMullen indicated that the US might apply additional sanctions. More than half of Honduras' trade is with the US.

The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE) announced on Aug. 26 that it was freezing credits to Honduras as a result of a coup that removed Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from power two months earlier, on June 28. The move is provisional, since the banks' governors are still considering whether to join the many multilateral agencies and foreign governments that have suspended financing for aid projects until Zelaya is returned to office. The BCIE has provided about $971 million in financing for Honduras over the last five years. (Associated Press, Aug. 27)

Awajún and Wampis indigenous leaders in the valley of Peru's Río Cenepa, in the Cordillera del Cóndor near the Ecuadoran border, issued a statement Aug. 25 giving the Dorato mining company 15 days to quit the territory. The statement came following a resolution by local apus (indigenous leaders) meeting in the town of Imacita, Amazonas region.

A total of 15, including two police officers, were injured Aug. 27 when the village of Cocachacra, in Islay province of Peru's southern Arequipa region, exploded into angry protest following the release of an environmental impact statement at a public hearing on the Tía María mining project proposed by the US-based Southern Copper Corporation. (RPP, Peru, Aug. 27)

Six years after the final report of the Truth and National Reconcilliation Commission (CVR) on Peru's 1980-2000 "dirty war" against the Sendero Luminoso guerillas, the citizens group Para Que no se Repita (roughly translated as "Never Again") has pledged a new campaign to raise awareness of human rights in the Andean nation. The move comes in response to comments by Defense Minister Rafael Rey calling the CVR's findings "false, unjust and calumnious." (La Republica, Aug. 27; RPP, Aug. 26)