Development & Aid

COVID Crisis Challenges in People with Disabilities and Hansen’s Disease

By Padmini Murthy
Even during the best of times, unfortunately members of the global community who have special needs are marginalized and often treated as social outcasts. The COVID crisis which has been raging for over the better part of the year 2020 has posed additional barriers and challenges for these already disenfranchised individuals.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

By Jan Lundius
COVID-19 has become a scourge affecting all levels of human society – morals, behaviour, human interaction, economy and politics. The pandemic has wrecked havoc on our way of being and its impact will remain huge and all-encompassing. It is not only affecting our globally shared existence, it is also changing what has been called ”the little life”, i.e. our own way of thinking and being, our personal life situation and the one of those close to us; people we love and depend upon – our friends and family.

Building Resilience in Pacific Education

By Michelle Belisle
School as we all know it hasn’t changed that much in over a century. However, in the face of new threats to health and wellbeing, the future of those familiar structures that bring teachers and students together is starting to be questioned.

Warming Temperatures & Decades of Oil Spills Cause Irreversible Damage to the Persian Gulf

By Rabiya Jaffery
The Persian Gulf is one of the most strategic waterways in the world and is also one of the most polluted. According to estimates by experts, pollution levels in the Persian Gulf are 47 times higher than the world’s average and are steadily increasing.

28 Organizations Promoting Indigenous Food Sovereignty

By Danielle Nierenberg
These 28 organizations are preserving Indigenous food systems and promoting Indigenous food sovereignty through the rematriation of Indigenous land, seeds, food and histories.

COVID-19 – Some 23.8 Million More Children Will Drop out of School

By Samira Sadeque
Countries with low human development are facing the brunt of school lockdowns, with more than 85 percent of their students effectively out of school by the second quarter of 2020, according to a United Nations policy brief on the impact of COVID-19 on education.

Multilateral Bank Intermediation Must Help Developing Countries’ Recovery

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has warned that developing countries would need more than the earlier estimated US$2.5 trillion to provide relief to affected families and businesses and expedite economic recovery.

Empowering Women in a Digitally Equipped, yet Challenging World: A Story of Engagement

By Fairuz Ahmed
A girl has many roles. She can be a daughter, a mother, a friend, a wife or a sister. But her first and foremost introduction is a person, a human and a voice. No matter what remote or accessible part she may belong to, her story is unique and belongs only to her own. And if a thought-provoking, positive platform echo her voice, it can achieve wonders.

Will There Also Be a Post-Journalism?

By Andrés Cañizález
Every era brings its own buzzwords or catchphrases along with it. The term du jour is ‘pandemic’, namely ‘coronavirus’ and ‘COVID-19’; but alongside these words, speculation and forecasts over the post-pandemic world are flourishing. There is a proliferation of pieces and commentary on what our daily lives or the economy will be like once the epidemic is under control, that is, how we will live in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Biodiversity Loss Could be Making Us Sick – Here’s Why

By 2050, 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in towns and cities. Urban living brings many benefits, but city dwellers worldwide are seeing a rapid increase in noncommunicable health problems, such as asthma and inflammatory bowel disease.

Mental Health and COVID-19 in India

By Madhumitha Balaji and Vikram Patel
To fully realise the mental health crisis that India faces in relation to COVID-19, one has to begin with recognising the very serious situation that existed even before the pandemic.

Bangladesh Deals with Triple Disasters of Flooding, Coronavirus and Lost Livelihoods

By Farid Ahmed
With nearly 5.5 million people people across Bangladesh affected by severe flooding -- the worst in two decades -- humanitarian experts are concerned that millions of people, already badly impacted by COVID-19, will be pushed further into poverty.

The UN General Assembly: A 75-Year Journey Towards the Future We Want

By Tijjani Muhammad-Bande
The United Nations came into existence at a time of great despair, when the penholders of its founding document dared to imagine a better world, one that would be defined by peace and equality. Visionary world leaders chose hope over cynicism, empathy over indifference and partnership over distrust when they came together in San Francisco on 26 June 1945 to sign the Charter of the United Nations. They embarked upon a new, rules-based world order, with an Organization of unrivalled legitimacy at its core.

The New Poor Post-pandemic: Time for Cushioning the Most Vulnerable in Southeast Asia

By Kaveh Zahedi and Van Nguyen
After decades of impressive growth, for the first time, Southeast Asia is experiencing a drop in measured human development. The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will likely take months to reveal itself and years to put right. Yet, a legacy of mobilizing under constraints is leading Southeast Asia’s pandemic response.

Clean Cooking Transition: Pathways as Seen by Kenyan Villagers

By Eco Matser
The Sustainable Development goals on energy speak clear: universal access energy and clean cooking by 2030 (SDG7). But the current efforts are still lagging several steps behind the specific needs of the communities and are not enough to achieve energy access for all, especially clean cooking solutions.

Religion & the Pandemic: A Call Beyond the Here & Now

By Prof. Azza Karam
-- I have never been interested in religion or spirituality before, but I found myself tuning in to all sorts of on-line religion and spirituality related forums “in search of something.”

Address Malnutrition with Food Insecurity

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
The 2020 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization and its United Nations partners in mid-July, reports that chronic hunger continued to increase to 690 million worldwide in 2019, 60 million more than in 2014.

With Proper Investment in Youth, Kenya’s Potential for Progress Is Unlimited

By Ruth Kagia and Siddharth Chatterjee
Africa’s demographic boom has been hailed as its biggest promise for transforming the continent’s economic and social outcomes, but only if the right investments are made to prepare its youthful population for tomorrow’s world.

SDGs: Accelerating Action & Transformative Pathways through Nature-based Solutions

By Haoliang Xu
The theme of this year’s High-Level Political Forum, where governments reviewed progress on the Sustainable Development Goals was “Accelerated action and transformative pathways: realizing the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development.”

The COVID-19 Plastic Pandemic

By Sonia Awale and Ramesh Kumar
The coronavirus pandemic was a respite for nature everywhere. The air was cleaner, trekking trails were pristine, the summit of Mt Everest was deserted, and worldwide carbon emission dipped by -26%.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

By Joaquín Roy
In the cinematic context of the death of the Italian and universal composer, Ennio Morricone, author of the background music of more than four hundred films, as an indirect tribute, Europe took a solid step.
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