At the start of 2024, we stand at a critical juncture: Geopolitical tensions are escalating, economic integration is unravelling, and multilateral cooperation is faltering. This global fragmentation threatens to undermine decades of progress made for children worldwide.
A gathering ‘perfect storm’ – due to various developments, several quite deliberate – now threatens much devastation in the global South, likely to most hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.
Contractionary economic trends since 2008 and ‘geopolitical’ conflicts subverting international cooperation have worsened world conditions, especially in the poorest countries, mainly in Africa, leaving their poor worse off.
As the world is still gearing up to welcome 2024, let us find a moment to reflect on some of the key trends of the past year and pursue now to embrace the path towards hope and promise for everyone, everywhere.
An agreement signed between the Rwandan government and the Africa Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation (APTF) gives impetus to Africa’s domestic industry with the hope of helping the continent tackle vaccine inequity and fill the critical gap in vaccine manufacturing.
With the US Fed raising interest rates, the world economy is slowing as debt distress spreads across the global South, increasing poverty worldwide to pre-pandemic levels, with the poorest countries faring worst.
On August 22, 2023, Women's Affairs Ministers from the Commonwealth huddled in a room at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, they were meeting in person.
Thirty-three years ago, Bala Amerasekaran – a Sri Lankan by birth – visited Freetown, Sierra Leone. Since then, the West African nation has been his home, where Amerasekaran has dedicated his life to conserving the chimpanzee – Sierra Leone’s national animal.
After months of warding off appeals from his employers to get vaccinated for the COVID-19 disease, Mohammad Yusuf, 24, working as a live-in domestic worker in Karachi’s Clifton area, finally relented and got his first shot.
It’s a rapid reversal for New Zealand’s Labour Party, in power for six years. At the
last election in 2020 it won an outright majority, the first party to do so under the current voting system. But three years on, it’s finished a distant second in the election held on 14 October. The result speaks to a broader pattern seen amid economic strife in many countries – of intense political volatility and the rejection of incumbents.
Cities have always been dynamic hubs of culture, education, economic growth and opportunity, and most importantly, centres of social interaction attracting residents and visitors alike.
When COVID-19 claimed millions of lives across India, Kerala state at the southern tip of the subcontinent stood apart for low mortality rates that experts attribute to good governance, a robust public health delivery system and strong civil society support.
As the adage goes, when you find yourself stuck in a hole, stop digging. As African leaders and their philanthropic and bilateral sponsors prepare for another glitzy African Green Revolution Forum, convening September 5-8 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, they are instead handing out new shovels to dig the continent deeper into a hunger crisis caused in part by their failing obsession with corporate-led industrialized agriculture.
Sri Lanka has been faced with an unprecedented political and economic crisis since the beginning of 2022.
The dominant narrative attributes the crisis to the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine conflict, China’s ‘debt trap diplomacy’ and – most importantly – the corruption and mismanagement of the ruling
Rajapaksa family.
Badri Acharya is currently at the helm of the public health office in Pokhara, a prominent city within Nepal's Himalayan region and a renowned tourist hotspot.
With the ongoing global food crisis—triggered by the COVID pandemic, disasters, supply chain disruptions, and conflict in Ukraine—food security should be at the top of the G20 agenda when countries gather in India in September 2023.
In 2015, almost all heads of government in the world committed to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including universal health coverage (UHC). This was consistent with the World Health Organization’s commitment to Health for All.
This year marks halfway towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an ambitious agenda which set out to transform our world.
We have always known that the goals cannot be realized without the inclusion of persons with disabilities. From poverty to inequality, climate to health the promise to leave no-one behind is the bedrock of the SDG call to action.
The reasons that led to inequitable distribution of COVID vaccines during the pandemic have been inherent in the global pharmaceutical supply chain for decades and contributed to serious adverse consequences for global south countries, as was evident with HIV and Ebola. Further, those issues will likely contribute to inequities with regard to vital medicines in the future. This story by IPS Correspondent and IWMF Fellow Jewel Fraser highlights that the inequity issue is definitely not due just to the pandemic but an ongoing one.
The COVID-19 crisis has shone a light on the danger of pandemics; social crises have shone a light on the danger of inequalities. And the reality is that outbreaks become the pandemics they do because of inequality. The good news is that both can be overcome – if they are confronted as one.
For centuries, malaria has remained one of the deadliest diseases, inflicting great suffering on families and perpetuating the cycle of poverty in many communities and nations. The
African region currently accounts for 95% of malaria cases and 96% of malaria deaths globally, with
women and girls disproportionately affected by the disease.