Development & Aid

Canada Implements New Food Guidelines, But What About the Food Waste?

By Stephen Leahy
Canada introduced a new healthy eating food guide January 2019 and, for the first time, the meat, dairy and processed food and beverage industries were not involved. Based on the recommendations of health and nutrition experts, the guide places a new emphasis on eating plants, drinking water and cooking at home.

Deported Salvadoran Women Pin Their Hopes on Poultry Production

By Edgardo Ayala
Salvadoran farmer Lorena Mejía opens an incubator and monitors the temperature of the eggs, which will soon provide her with more birds and eggs as the chickens hatch and grow up.

Time, Gentlemen, Please—Next President of the World Bank

By Owen Barder
It is time for an open, fair, merit-based process to appoint the next President of the World Bank. And I’ll explain below why I think the Europeans may, at last, break the cartel that has prevented this.

The Right to Life, Liberty, and Land

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
Sustainable land management is becoming more important than ever as rates of emissions, deforestation, and water scarcity continue to increase. But what if you don’t have rights to the land? While the impact of agriculture on land is well known, the relationship between land degradation and land tenure seems to be less understood.

A Truly Global Effort is Needed to Eradicate FGM by 2030

By Divya Srinivasan
According to official data on the global prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) released by UNICEF there are 200 million women and girls in the world who have been cut. Shocking though this statistic is, it seriously underestimates the nature and scale of the problem.

The Upcoming Generations Can Lift the Arab Region out of Its Current Crisis

By Idriss Jazairy
History testifies that there is no end to its evolution despite what some have claimed. This is because aspirations of its actors are in constant flux and because the quest for an « ideal city » is asymptotic.Each generation wants to put its imprint on the present and to be the architect of its future in the pursuit of its own ideal.

Confronting the Challenges of Migration in West & Central Africa

By Richard Danziger
Without a doubt, migration is a defining issue of this century. One billion people, one-seventh of the world’s population, are migrants. Some 258 million people are international migrants, 40 million are internally displaced and 24 million are refugees or asylum seekers.In 2018, there was no longer a single state that can claim to be untouched by human mobility.

Business-Friendly & Rights-based Approaches to Achieve SDGs

By Dilum Abeysekera
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 has entered its fourth year of implementation.In terms of the estimated cost and the universal coverage of both developed and developing countries, it is the biggest ever development program that is being implemented to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

Beware Proposed E-commerce Rules

By Chakravarthi Raghavan and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
In Davos in late January, several powerful governments and their allies announced their intention to launch new negotiations on e-commerce. Unusually, the intention is to launch the plurilateral negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO), an ostensibly multilateral organization, setting problematic precedents for the future of multilateral negotiations.

Sex Education and Women´s Health

By Jan Lundius
Is there a connection between sex education, gender equality and promiscuity? On this website, Fabiana Fraysinnet recently denounced a Brazilian crusade against sex education conducted by conservative and religious sectors. Such initiatives are common in several other countries, where politicians and religious leaders accuse sexual education of blurring boundaries between male and female and thus foment homosexuality and transsexualism, as well as a moral relativism undermining family structures and adherence to religious guidance and dogma.

Venezuela
 
Alea Jacta Est!

By Idriss Jazairy
The count down towards a tragic outcome in Venezuela has started. All outside powers express what they say is a shared concern for its peace-loving people that has the misfortune of sitting on what is maybe the largest oil reserves in the world.  The problem is that geopolitics lead groups of foreign countries to express different, not to say opposed recipes as to how democracy can be restored and happiness pursued in Venezuela and want to make their own views prevail in this divided country.

Bullets Against Pots and Pans in the Crackdown on Venezuela’s Protests

By Humberto Márquez
The protests in Venezuela demanding an end to the presidency of Nicolás Maduro in the last 10 days of January, whose soundtrack was the sound of banging on pots and pans in working-class neighbourhoods, had a high human cost: more than 40 deaths, dozens wounded and about a thousand detainees, including 100 women and 90 children under 18.

Removing Arsenic from Groundwater: We Have the Tools, Let’s Use Them

By Yina Shan, Praem Mehta, Duminda Perera, & Yurissa Varela
Cost-effective technologies are available to remove arsenic in groundwater. Why then do tens of millions still fall ill to this chronic problem? High natural levels of arsenic are characteristic of the groundwater supply in many countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Mongolia, and the United States.

Nigerians Hear How Migrating Irregularly “Is Like Killing Yourself”

By Sam Olukoya
“Don’t assume if you attempt the journey your fortune will change for the better,” a woman says over the public address system in the crowded Uselu market in Benin City, the capital of Nigeria’s Edo State. “Many embarked on the journey and never made it. Many people are dying in the Sahara Desert.” 

Making Communities Drought Resilient

By Desmond Brown
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD’s) Drought Initiative is in full swing with dozens of countries signing up to plan their drought programme.

Mexican Village Wants to Turn Thermoelectric Plant into Solar Panel Factory

By Emilio Godoy
Social organisations in the central Mexican municipality of Yecapixtla managed to halt the construction of a large thermoelectric plant in the town and are now designing a project to convert the installation into a solar panel factory, which would bring the area socioeconomic and environmental dividends.

Gender Gap Made Worse by Land Degradation

By Desmond Brown
In parts of the world where the gender gap is already wide, land degradation places women and girls at even greater risk.

People Power Will Bring Change — Not Davos

By Jenny Ricks
They said they cared about climate change but they flew in on private jets in record numbers. They said they cared about inequality but laughed off the idea of higher taxes for the rich. They spoke about democracy and human rights but they dined with a far-right populist. If there was ever any doubt about Davos representing the epitome of duplicity, then 2019 has firmly laid that to rest.

Billions of Dollars Available for Reducing and Reversing Land Degradation

By Desmond Brown
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has debunked the notion that there is no funding available for countries to prevent, reduce or reverse land degradation.

Crusade Against Sex Education Undermines Progress Made in Latin America

By Fabiana Frayssinet
The crusade against comprehensive sex education by conservative and religious sectors undermines progress in Latin America and could further drive up rates of teen pregnancy, communicable diseases and abuse against girls and adolescents.

Ethics for artificial intelligence

By Rosli Omar and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Owing to our varied circumstances and experiences, there are contradictory tendencies to either exaggerate or underestimate the power and importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in contemporary society.
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