Call It ‘Old’, ‘Contemporary’, ‘Modern’ or Whatever: It Is Slavery

No matter what it is called -- it is the abhorrent daily life of a billion enslaved humans.  The real number of “modern” slaves is understandably unknown. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that more than 40 million people worldwide are victims of modern slavery.

Inequality is Set to Kill Millions – “We Have to Fight it Together.”

This week I called out to the world to warn them that inequalities are making us all unsafe. I noted starkly our new analysis that we face millions of additional AIDS deaths – 7.7 million in the next decade alone – as well continued devastation from pandemics, unless leaders address the inequalities which drive them. We have to treat this threat as an emergency, as a red alert.

How Inequality Drives HIV in Adolescent Girls and Young Women

Despite the advances that have been made against HIV, the world has 37 million people living with HIV. And 680,000 people died from AIDS-related causes in 2020. While the prevention of mother to child transmission, and provision of treatment as prevention, are great successes, there are still gaps. Over 1.5 million new HIV infections were recorded in 2020.

How to Tackle the Femicide Epidemic

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the increase in domestic violence rates has led the United Nations to declare a ‘shadow pandemic’ of gender-based violence. In the most brutal cases, the violence has led to murder – or ‘femicide’, as the World Health Organisation calls the killing of women specifically because of their gender.

Profiting from the Carbon Offset Distraction

Carbon offset markets allow the rich to emit as financial intermediaries profit. By fostering the fiction that others can be paid to cut greenhouse gases (GHGs) instead, it undermines efforts to do so.

School Meals Coalition Hopes to Provide a Meal to Every Child

Meals at schools not only give each child a nutritious meal but increase enrolments, among other benefits.

Gender, Education and Drop Outs

While COVID 19 is keeping the world and news media in its constant grip and national politics often come to the forefront, it might be easy to forget urgent and nevertheless related matters. One is how global education has suffered and how children and youngsters have been forced to cope with a different reality. This aspect like so many other of human existence is gendered and while addressing education it is relevant to talk about changing gender roles as well.

Feminism Weaponized Against Trans People

There is a resurgence of anti-trans sentiment right now. It’s not only Dave Chapelle’s toxic rants in his most recent Netflix special: we see it across social, political and cultural arenas including in JK Rowling's ongoing embrace of trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs); the introduction of bills designed to harm trans kids in the US; Uganda's Sexual Offenses bill, which violates international human rights; and “gender-critical” academics like Kathleen Stock profiting from their inflammatory rhetoric.

Yet Another Scourge: A Third of All Women are Subjected to Violence

Thirty percent of women and girls suffered physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, most frequently by an intimate partner. And more than 70 percent of all sold, bought and enslaved victims of human smuggling and trafficking are women and girls -- three out of four of them are sexually exploited.

Climate Change with 8 Billion Humans

With world population approaching 8 billion humans, the demographic growth of nations is unfortunately largely ignored by governments whenever climate change is considered.

Protecting Environmental Water from Antimicrobial Resistance

The overuse and misuse of antimicrobial medicines and chemicals has become the main driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and drug-resistant infections that threaten human health and the global economy.

Climate Injustice at Glasgow Cop-Out

The planet is already 1.1°C warmer than in pre-industrial times. July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded in 142 years. Despite the pandemic slowdown, 2020 was the hottest year so far, ending the warmest decade (2011-2020) ever. Betrayal in Glasgow Summing up widespread views of the recently concluded Glasgow climate summit, former Irish President Mary Robinson observed, “People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty,… nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster”.

Mother of Summits: Sweet and Sour Diplomacy, but Nothing Cooked!

It has been said that when Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war. The summit of the leaders of world’s two strongest powers, the United States and China, came face to face at long last. Albeit virtually. Still, this was undoubtedly the “mother of summits” this year. There were two telephone conversations earlier, but according to US officials this nearly four hours of summitry was far more “candid intense, and deeper interaction”. If there was one single take-away from this meeting, it was the establishment beyond all reasonable doubt of the incontrovertible fact that the US and China were indeed the two most influential global state actors. The decisions between the two, represented by their leaders, would profoundly impact the rest of humanity far into the future.

It’s Time to Find Solutions to the Gendered Consequences of the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects across the globe, but the data and evidence show that women have borne the brunt of the crisis. While inequalities in health, economic power, and other areas existed long before the pandemic began, the pandemic has widened these gaps.

Glossing Over in Glasgow – Some Thoughts on COP26

A week has gone by since COP 26 with 197 Parties ended in the Scottish city of Glasgow on extended time last Saturday. Climate change which covers wide array of issues affecting all living beings engaged the people around the world for COP 26 in a way never experienced since COP1 was held in Berlin in 1995.

Mental Health: Getting to Healthy, Happy

"I was told to wait and cry it out. How could I explain to them that I have been crying for years? That was not the solution," asks Azra Zeng, a divorced mother of four in an interview with IPS. "I wanted to speak to someone. I wanted to seek help where I could feel whole again. It felt that I was dying from inside, but no one could see."

1 in 2 Humans Cannot Celebrate World Toilet Day – This Is Why

Did you know that half of the world's population do not have toilets? And that, globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces? And that every day, over 700 children under five years old die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene?

Children Address Unequal Access to Education During Pandemic

In the whirl of effort nations are making to combat COVID-19, the powerful role that children and young people can play in overcoming the harmful effects of school closures is too easily overlooked.

Double Solution to Ongoing Food and Climate Crises

For the last ten years, Angeline Wanjira’s food stall at Kirigiti Market in Kiambu County has featured the same foods, cabbages, potatoes and carrots, keeping with the community’s most preferred food types.

Antimicrobial Resistance Calls for Brainpower of a Space Agency and Campaigning Zeal of an NGO

The cost of infectious diseases is somewhere between staggering and incalculable. Around $8 trillion and 156 million life years were lost in 2016 alone. Throughout human history, pestilences have wiped out more lives than famine and violence.