Women in Nepal’s remote rural areas stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their men during the bloody 1996-2006 civil war that overthrew an oppressive monarchy, but many now battle domestic violence at home.
Before Bor B Primary School built latrines on the school grounds two years ago, students would leave during their first break to head home. Most did not come back until the next morning.
Angola is celebrating 10 years of peace on Apr. 4. Since the end of its 27-year- long civil war in 2002, the country’s economy has prospered thanks to oil. But experts fear that parliamentary elections later this year could return the country to violence and instability.
South Africa needs to stop agonising over whether it deserves to be in BRICS and start focusing on making the most of its membership to leverage better trade deals.
A multi-pronged strategy to end female genital mutilation in Mauritania is making gradual progress, though campaigners acknowledge much remains to be done in a country where more than two-thirds of girls suffer excision.
Trade ministers of the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa – say that at the G20 trade ministerial summit later this month in Mexico they will try to ensure that attempts by industrialised countries to frame a new trade agenda do not drown development-led trade liberalisation and the World Trade Organization talks.
South Africa's nine provinces will begin phasing out provision of free formula to HIV-positive mothers and implement a new policy on breast-feeding from Sunday. But despite the clarity of the policy and its supporting data, vocal critics, including respected individuals from leading medical and academic institutions, have decried the choice.
Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day.
Fifteen-year-old Aicha is one of the many spice vendors hawking their wares in the Dantokpa market, in Benin's economic capital, Cotonou. But a closer look at her tidy stall reveals a disturbing detail: the powdered spices are packaged in recycled medicine vials.
"Only God knows what will happen to me and my children - for two months there's been nothing to eat. We're living like beggars," Henriette Sanglar, a mother of four in the Moursal quarter of the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, told IPS.
The group of children playing in a shaded courtyard in Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital Abidjan seem carefree. But when a car exhaust blasts, they tremble. When a soldier walks past, they shudder. And they become anxious when an unknown adult approaches them.
"I would like to use contraception, but my husband is against it," says Bintou Moussa*. The 32-year-old mother has just given birth to her sixth child at the Abobo General Hospital in Cote d’Ivoire’s commercial capital Abidjan.
It is late afternoon and a group of men and women begin to converge under the shade of a huge mango tree in Yambio town, the capital of South Sudan’s western Equatoria state. The group is not gathering for an ethnic, political or religious meeting. They are here to listen to the radio.
One-year-old Angama Ouattara lies on a rusted hospital bed, a drip attached to her tiny, left foot. Her mother, Minata, sits on the edge of the mattress, smoothing out the sheets she had to bring from home.
In a Kibera-bound mini-bus taxi, the driver changes the station just as he turns onto Ngong Road, kilometres away from the Kenyan slum. He tunes into Pamoja Radio 99.9 FM, a local community radio station that broadcasts only in Kibera.
The brightly painted old shipping container with solar panels on its roof and high-specification filtration devices inside looks out of place in this dusty Angolan village of Bom Jesus, 50 kilometres east of the capital Luanda.
Governments and civil society organisations in Central Africa are slowly developing strategies in response to global warming. But specialists say the steps being taken seem hesitant in the face of emerging realities.
Over 100,000 people in Mozambique are still recovering from losing their homes and crops, and from being cut off from schools and shops after a tropical storm and cyclone hit the southern African country in January. But the worst may not be over as another dangerous cyclone is expected to make landfall Friday evening as emergency stocks run low.
"Welcome to Krishi (farming) Radio. You are listening to FM 98.8 megahertz and I am your hostess Shahnaz Parvin," the local community radio crackles over the mobile phones and transistors of residents in coastal Barguna district.
As Somalia’s transitional government and various stakeholders meet Wednesday to discuss the inclusion of the country’s clans in the new government, women politicians have called for a greater role in the leadership of this East African nation.
Seven out of the eight governments in the Sahel – the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south – have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger.