VISITED BLOGS AND CLASS FEEDBACK

I visited the blogs from:

Tatiana Arias

Diana Fernanda Ríos

Daniel Clavijo

Daniel Peña

Pablo Londoño

The one I liked the most was Diana´s blog. And I liked not because it was the prettiest one, but because its content and writes were very interesting and well referentiated.

About the class, I want to say that I learned a lot, all the topics were very interesting and we could learn something about many countries. The only "negative" aspect I want to talk about is the thing that the topics from this class are very similar to Intercultural Management. So my advice is to have a meeting with the professors from that class and try to bring different ideas to the students.

Thank you for everything!!!!

UN TECHO PARA MI PAÍS

I want to write about an interesting Latin American Organization name “UN TECHO PARA MÍ PAÍS”. It was first found in Chile in 1997, after a natural disaster that left thousands of people homeless, by a group of young university students that felt the necessity of denouncing the extreme poverty of millions of people from the region by building emergency houses and enhancing a project of social rehabilitation.

After the date, it begins a project that calls society to act and shows them the lack of opportunities and the bad living conditions of many Latin-Americans. The initiative goes through the continent facing the problems and challenges of each country.

Today it is present in 16 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haití, México, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Perú, República Dominicana and Uruguay. The Project works as the scheme of voluntarism of young people that travel around the continent building houses for people with scarce resources.

I used to work with them, and I remember the first time building a house and I do not forget the faces of the people we were helping. The most important issue of the organization is that they don’t give everything to these families. At the contrary, they have to pay an initial fee so they get conscious of reality and value more the house.

So, if you want to make part of this experience, there is a group in Medellín. Visit the web page: http://www.untechoparamipais.org/colombia/sitio/index.php? and get more information.

QUESTION: Do you know of other cases of indigenous communities that have gone through the same process? Mentioned them

Here in Colombia we have almost 80 ethnic groups of indigenous communities with high cultural diversity: there are 64 languages and 300 dialects spoken by them, they have different values, costumes, beliefs and live in 32 departments of the country. As the case of Australia, the indigenous people in Colombia inhabited the country's present territory prior to its discovery by Europeans around 1500, and had suffered lots of harassment and human violations from the conquerors at the beginnings of the discovery of the continent. Their process of organization and fight date from conquest time. But the problem did not finish when we got free from Spain, there is still violence against them and their culture is in dangerous of extinguishing.

The Colombian government has a particular obligation to adopt specific measures to protect these communities with special dependency on and attachment to their lands against forced displacement from armed groups, such as the FARC or the Paramilitares. They have been particularly affected by years of conflict and violence, because their are located in strategic territories that are target of the armed conflict and also because their lands are very rich for illegal crops, suffering discrimination and marginalization.

In the country there are several organizations, leader by indigenous, that foster human rights for their people and also enhance the participation in democracy. To name one group, we have the ONIC (national organization of indigenous from Colombia). An example of progress for these people and other minorities (black people), was seen in the electoral votes. Last month all Colombians could vote for their representatives of Chamber and Congress, including for indigenous representatives.

So we can conclude that although there are still violations against indigenous from illegal groups, there is more participation in the public decisions and they are recognized as citizens that brings diversity to our country.

REFERENCES:

http://www.onic.org.co/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_in_Colombia

LABOR UNIONS IN COLOMBIA

The trade Unions or Labor Unions were first originated in Europe. They are organizations of workers that look for achieving a common goal: better working conditions. These kind of conditions may include better wages, work rules, promotions, or benefits. The labor unions sometimes had an impact on labor policies through the use of strikes or some other tactics.

The Labor Unions play and active role in decision making of Colombian society. In our country we have around one million unionized workers and approximately 7.650 labor unions registered in the Ministery of Social Protection.

The colombian constitution enshrine as fundamental the right to organize unions. The laboral code says that the automatic recognition occurs by having at least 25 members that follows a simple registration procedure. Acording to de law, labor unions are free from designing their own rules and manage their activities.

In Colombia, as in any other country in the world, Unions are essential actors in the modern and democratic life. New companies, national or international, must take them into account in their decisions and try to dialogue with them in order to prevent strikes or signs of violence. Nowadays, the Colombian unions and their leaders are suffering a humanitarian crisis expressed in selective violence with total impunity; to name son facts, almost 99% of the cases of violations are not punished yet and many of the murders have not been investigated.

REFERENCES

http://survey07.ituc-csi.org/getcountry.php?IDCountry=COL&IDLang=ES

Best of Blogs BOBS 2010 awards

This is the link for the Best Blog in Spanish: http://mundoporlibre.com/ and it is named:

"La Vuelta al Mundo de Asun y Ricardo"

It is a journal trip from a couple that share all their experiences, advices and useful information to travel around the world.

Hope you like it!!!!!

ISLAMIC BANKING

In the last years, Islamic Banks have grown in size and number around the world. The interesting topic here is that these kind of institutions doesn´t allow charging interest because as the quoran says: “Allah forbids Riba and permits trade”. Riba is a kind of return over financial procedures. So, most of the Islamic banking are not based on profit sharing but in debt like instruments.

There are Islamic banks in over 60 countries. And in states like Iran, Pakistan and Sudan the whole system has been converted to Islam banking. The success of Islamic banking is shown in its growth rates of more than 15%. That is one of the reasons why conventional banks have started offering Islamic financial contracts.

An example of these kind of debt-like contracts are the SUKUKS. They are Islamic debt instruments such as the conventional bonds. They are also known as “trust certificates” or “participation securities”. Like the capitalist bonds, sukuks are issued in exchange for loans to the issuer and technically it obligates the issuer to pay to the holder a sum of money but it must not contain interest, otherwise it must be punished.

Some researchers expects that Islamic banks will promote growth in Islamic countries by providing long-term financing to growth-oriented sectors of the economy.

To conclude, we have seen even that the Islam is very severe with its religious beliefs and costumes, but they have adapted and invented, like in the financial system, products or services that are in synergy with their religion and have had a lot of success.

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REFERENCES

Rajesh K. Aggarwal and Tarik Yousef, (Feb., 2000), Islamic Banks and Investment Financing, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 32, No. 1 pp. 93-120, Ohio State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2601094 Accessed: 20/04/2010 18:08

http://ucclaw.blogspot.com/2009/02/sukuks-islamic-debt-instruments.html

THE SLAUGHTER OF TIANANMEN SQUARE (1989)

Last year was the 20^th anniversary of the protest in Tiananmen Square (Beijing-China). Let’s take a glance at this important incident that still remains in the minds of the Chinese citizens.

Everything started as an opposition to China’s Communist Party. Few university students raised a peaceful march in Tiananmen Square. They were demanding more freedoms and discussing topics about politics and corruption. At the beginning protests were peaceful and organized, but as soon as more students were joining the march, the government (leaded by Den Xiaoping) ordered the military forces to take control over the situation. A huge combat initiated with tanks and rocks. Around 5000 citizens were killed at Beijing. At the end the Chinese government proclaimed the victory against the protesters that were supporting the democratic ideas.

Years later, the government started losing power and followers, and the economy grew substantially. China opened its doors to the liberal-economic practices.

Finally, even that from that date of the year 89 some many changes has occurred, the degradation of human rights had been increasing (bad labor conditions, low payments, difficult living conditions). And It still remains anger and sorrow in the citizens when commemorating that historical day that has introduced some many changes in China at expenses of thousands of deaths, and

References:

• (2009). 1989 TIANANMEN SQUARE MASSACRE. Junior Scholastic, 111(13), 6. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier database.

• http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/03pol/c03s11.html