Humanitarian Emergencies

Community Organization and Solidarity in Peru Tackle Hunger in Pandemic

By Mariela Jara
It's nine o'clock in the morning and Mauricia Rodríguez is already peeling garlic to season the day's lunch at the Network of Organized Women of Villa Torreblanca, one of more than 2,400 solidarity-based soup kitchens that have emerged in the Peruvian capital in response to the worsening poverty caused by the partial or total halt of economic activities in the country due to COVID-19.

Human Rights Violations and Culture of Impunity in South Asia

By Sania Farooqui
As countries across South Asia continue to battle the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, causing serious public health and economic crisis, this region, which is home to almost 2 billion people, is also grappling with the erosion of democratic norms, growing authoritarianism, the crackdown on freedom of press, speech and dissent.

Covax, the Developing World’s Hope against COVID, Has Made It Only Halfway

By Humberto Márquez
The Covax initiative, the hope of the countries of the developing South to immunize their populations against COVID-19, only met half of its goals in 2021. And as 2022 begins, and the omicron variant of the virus is spreading fast, the scheme still depends on the decisions of pharmaceutical companies and the goodwill of donor governments.

Health Workers Lauded for Role in Leprosy Treatment During Pandemic

By Joyce Chimbi
The human rights of people affected by leprosy are central to Yohei Sasakawa’s concept of a leprosy-free world.

Human Trafficking, Rape, Extortion Behind ‘Forced Conversions’, say Experts

By Zofeen Ebrahim
Two years after Michelle, 15, was kidnapped, sold, forced to convert to Islam and married to a stranger, relatives still ostracise her.

Adolescents Left Behind Global AIDS Response – Experts

By Joyce Chimbi
The ominous warning came in 2019 through an anonymous message on her mobile phone to stay away from a man she met on social media.

UN Plea to Save Afghanistan from Full-Blown Humanitarian Crisis

By Naureen Hossain
UN agencies have asked for a record USD 4.4 billion in aid for Afghanistan to avert a full-blown humanitarian crisis that could see hunger, distress, and death and a mass exodus of people from the country.

Underfunded and Deadly Tuberculosis Needs its Own Bill Gates

By Busani Bafana
Global efforts to end tuberculosis (TB) are futile without dedicated investment in research into the debilitating disease that is killing 4000 people a day, Stop TB Partnership warns.

Free at Last: Trafficked Woman’s Story a Warning to Other Vulnerable Job Seekers

By Aimable Twahirwa
When Kamikazi * from Gisagara, a district in Southern Rwanda, was forced to quit her job due to COVID-19 last year, she desperately sought other employment.

Once Tossed and Abused, Human Trafficking Survivor Finds Solace

By Mehru Jaffer
For over two decades, Nina tossed around like a leaf in a storm. While a teenager, she was lured into the sex trade, and pimps kept a huge chunk of the money that she earned as a sex slave. Nina was often bruised. Once, she refused sex with a man who did not want to use a condom. He beat her so severely that she had found it difficult to breathe.

2021: A Grim Year for Planet Earth

By Farhana Haque Rahman
Between the COVID-19 pandemic and the deadly manifestations of the climate crisis, there were few places to hide for most of us in 2021. Ageing billionaires riding booming stock markets could take their first flights into space in their own rockets, but for the rest of Planet Earth’s 8 billion people with their feet on the ground it was a year of placing hope in the hands of scientists and our political leaders to turn the tide.

Vaccines, Diagnostics and Therapeutics as Global Public Goods

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
Countries in the Asia-Pacific region are trying their best to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic by rapidly rolling out vaccination programmes and putting in place public health interventions to reduce its impact. At the end of November, there were 262 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 5.2 million deaths globally. About 60 per cent of all COVID-19 cases and half of all COVID-19 related deaths were in Asia and the Pacific. About 7.8 billion vaccines have been administered globally, and vaccine supply is generally improving.

Covid-19 Has Accelerated New Agtech Development and Adoption in Asia-Pacific!

By Paul S. Teng and Genevieve Donnellon-May
While the COVID-19 impact has been predominantly negative, the pandemic appears to have sparked increased interest in developing agricultural technology (agtech) to improve the efficiency of food systems, from input supplies through farming and processing to delivery and retail.

Trafficked and Trapped in Libya: A Nigerian Woman’s Story

By Sam Olukoya
Miriam* hoped for a better life in Europe. Instead, her journey ended in Libya, where, double-crossed by traffickers she was raped and abused.  She has returned to Nigeria and shared her experiences with Sam Olukoya.

The Future of an Entire Generation Hangs in the Balance

By Yasmine Sherif and Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly
COVID-19 has upended our world, threatening our health, destroying economies and livelihoods, and deepening poverty and inequalities. It also created the single largest disruption to education systems that the world has ever seen.

Youth at Forefront of Climate Change Action Will Make Biggest Impact

By Joyce Chimbi
On Gladys Habu’s birthday, she filmed a message to world leaders while standing waist-deep in the sea next to a dead tree stump – the only remnant of Kale Island now submerged underwater due to climate-change-induced sea-level rise.

Cool Scheme to Reduce Food Waste in Nigeria

By Busani Bafana
Food spoilage forced smallholder farmers out of pocket and out of business – until an entrepreneur came up with a cool idea.

Greed-Driven Pandemic Still Killing Millions

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Nazihah Noor
Failure to vaccinate most in poor countries sustains the COVID-19 pandemic. Rich country greed and patent monopolies block developing countries from affordably making the means to protect themselves. Mutant menace The SARS-CoV-2 virus has been mutating as it replicates. Numerous replications in hundreds of millions of hosts have generated many variants. Some mutations are more resilient than others, and better able to overcome human defences.

CPJ’s Census on Jailed Journalists Reveals Distressing “Intolerance of Independent Journalism”

By Naureen Hossain
Governments are determined to control information and are prepared to imprison journalists to achieve this mission, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said following the release of their annual global census tracking journalists who were imprisoned and killed in 2021.

Noorjehan Niaz and Zakia Soman: Bonded to Change the Trajectory of Muslim Women in India

By Mariya Salim
Discriminated in society and concerned about the discrimination of women in their homes, the two women who co-founded the Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) started the movement to further Muslim women’s leadership and help them reclaim their rights.

ECW Interviews UK Special Envoy for Girls’ Education, Helen Grant

Helen Grant became actively involved in politics in 2006 and was elected as Member of Parliament for the Kent constituency of Maidstone & The Weald at the 2010 General Election.
Next Page »