Stories written by Stella Paul

A Catch for Stressed Ecosystems

The key to sustainable economic growth with an eye on fragile ecosystems is integrated management, FAO experts said here on Wednesday.

Budget Is the Missing Link: FAO Director General

World food production in developing regions soared by up to 40 percent over the past decade, yet nearly a billion people continued to live with chronic hunger. 

Award Spotlights Indian Women Helping Women

Jassiben, a self-employed potter from Nana Shahpur village in western India, loves summer despite the heat waves and frequent power cuts, because summer days always mean great business.

Indian Farmers Flex Collective Muscles

Chelmet Padmamma, 42, of Babanagar village in southern India’s drought-prone Medak district, is a happy woman: the rain has come earlier this year, thrice soaking the three-acre farm that she co-owns with four other women from her village.

Sex Educators Struggle to Break Taboos

Liberian journalist Mae Azango says she spent a year living “like a bat, going from tree to tree” with her daughter in order to escape religious fanatics who were threatening to kill her for exposing the practice of female genital mutilation in her home country last year.

Youth Say Coca-Cola Is Easier to Find Than Condoms

“If I am thirsty and want a bottle of Coca-Cola I can get it, no matter where in the world I am. Why can’t I get contraceptives or sexual heathcare?” asked Carlos Jimmy Macazana Quispe, a youth representative from Peru currently in Kuala Lumpur for the third edition of the Women Deliver global conference on the "health and well-being of women and girls."

Maternal Healthcare Evades Marginalised Mothers

In the small village of Haldiyaganj in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, 17-year old Injuara Begum is nursing her son who was born right here on the floor of her home three years ago.

There’s Life in the AIDS Ribbon

Thirty-year old Swapna Raj of Hyderabad is a woman in a hurry: in time for the International AIDS day Swapna, a HIV positive person on anti-retroviral therapy (ART), has received a contract from the state government to deliver 5,000 red ribbons.