Wonder Woman: Not the Hero the UN Needs

For those of us who ever feel conflicted about the United Nations, the past month has been an exercise in managing absurd cognitive dissonance. First, on October 21 2016, the United Nations announced that the 1940s comic book heroine, Wonder Woman would be its new mascot for promoting the empowerment of women and girls.

Festival Spotlights African Women Filmmakers

At the Bioscope Independent Cinema in Johannesburg’s trendy, gentrifying Maboneng neighbourhood last week, the two-day HER Africa Film Festival showcased films and web series from across the globe, including Mali, the U.S., Burkina Faso and elsewhere.

Journalist Murders: The Ultimate Form of Censorship

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has condemned the killing of more than 800 journalists globally since 2006. A measly seven percent of these murders have been solved.

The Key Role Women Played in Culture of Peace

In the fifteen years since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, we have seen a tremendous enthusiasm among civil society at all levels in raising awareness, engaging in advocacy and building capacity for its meaningful implementation. It is my pleasure to write the foreword to this publication which is a meaningful endeavour to move the agenda forward on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the adoption of this groundbreaking resolution.

President of UNGA Disillusioned by Unsustainable Development

Development should be about more than building roads or buying air conditioners, the President of the UN General Assembly, Peter Thomson told IPS in a recent interview.

International Women’s Boat to Gaza

A few weeks ago, the US government agreed to give Israel $38 billion dollars, the largest military funding package the U.S. has given any nation. This $38 billion in military and other type of Aid will be used to imprison the Palestinians of Gaza, and continue Israel’s military occupation, and imposition of an apartheid state, upon the Palestinian people.

Toxic Air – The ‘Invisible Killer’ that Stifles 300 Million Children

About 300 million children in the world are living in areas with outdoor air so toxic – six or more times higher than international pollution guidelines – that it can cause serious health damage, including harming their brain development.

Rural Malawians About to Go Online

This month, many Malawians, especially those in rural areas, will be able to start accessing the internet as easily as opening a tap to get water.

Int’l Effort to Help Ethiopia Shoulder Its Refugee Burden

A concerned-looking group of refugees gather around a young woman grimacing and holding her stomach, squatting with her back against a tree. But this is no refugee camp, rather the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) compound just off a busy main road leading to Sidist Kilo roundabout in the Ethiopian capital.

Acknowledging the Ugly Truth

This happens every month, every week, everyday. Again and again and again. Brutality in the form of torture, sexual abuse, rape and murder has become epidemic in our society. Some cases get coverage in the media and spark reaction among citizens for a while, but most remain unreported and unknown. The ones which hit the headline in the media indicate the scale and depth of the dark side of our society.

Fiscal Reforms Imperative for Sustained Growth— Lankan Economists’ Consensus

Economists who addressed the 30th Annual Sessions of the Sri Lanka Economic Association on October 21st and 22nd on the theme “Fiscal Reforms: An Imperative for Sustained Economic Growth” agreed that the country could not go forward without fiscal reforms and fiscal consolidation. Fiscal reforms were imperative to enhance government revenue, reduce the fiscal deficit and provide the fiscal space for developmental expenditure for sustained high economic growth.

Longer, But Less Meaningful Lives?

The last one hundred years life expectancy has increased by about 25 per cent-from near 80 to near 100-in some countries. But, instead of increasing playful childhood, education, work and retirement by 25 per cent, the age of retirement has moved much less than the age at death.

Q&A: Bangladesh’s ‘Higher Trajectory of Development’ Not Easy but Achievable

Bangladesh, a country of 160 million people, has made significant progress in its efforts to accelerate economic growth, reduce poverty and promote social development, but it now faces certain challenges in consolidating these achievements and marching forward on the higher trajectory of development, says one of its leading economists.

Reparations owed for “Racial Terrorism” says UN Committee

Stressing the enduring relationship between injuries inflicted by slavery and contemporary injustices, a UN committee has recently issued a strongly-worded call for reparations for black U.S. Americans.

Africa and the Paris Agreement: Which Way Forward?

The Paris Agreement on climate change is set to enter into force on Nov. 4, after it passed the required threshold of at least 55 Parties, accounting for an estimated 55 per cent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, ratifying the agreement.

Dying to Get to Europe

They are not just data or numbers for statistical calculations. They are desperate human beings fleeing wars, violence, abuse, slavery and death. They hear and believe the bombastic speeches about democracy and human rights and watch the many images of welfare and good life in Europe.

Miracle of Wind

Karachi has been abundantly endowed with one of nature’s riches — wind. Located on the Arabian Sea coast, the city cannot complain of being stifled by desultory stillness. Before the city’s horizon changed drastically with the emergence of high-rise buildings, Karachiites had always enjoyed the luxury of cool breezes during summer evenings. The breeze is still there, but has been trapped by concrete and steel structures. Now the breeze has been left only in poetic idiom to give us solace. Faiz Ahmed Faiz captured its beauty in this line, “Jaise seheraon mein haule se chale baad-i-naseem...” (Like the morning breeze in the desert)

Gorbachev Appeals for Sanity, Dialogue

President Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union and recipient of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, has appealed to world leaders to reduce the dangerous tensions, which today threaten to plunge human civilization and the biosphere into an all-destroying nuclear war.

Cities Address a Key Challenge: Infrastructure Needs

“We as mayors have to govern midsize cities as if they were capital cities,” said Héctor Mantilla, city councilor of Floridablanca, the third-largest city in the northern Colombian department of Santander.

Are Public Enterprises Necessarily Inefficient?

From the 1980s, various studies purported to portray the public sector as a cesspool of abuse, inefficiency, incompetence and corruption. Books and articles with pejorative titles such as ‘vampire state’, ‘bureaucrats in business’ and so on thus provided the justification for privatization policies. Despite the caricature and exaggeration, there were always undoubted horror stories which could be cited as supposedly representative examples. But similarly, by way of contrast, other experiences show that SOEs can be run quite efficiently, even on commercial bases, confounding the dire predictions of the prophets of public sector doom.

Climate Doomsday – Another Step Closer

Almost inadvertently, humankind is getting closer everyday to the point of no-return towards what could be called the ‘climate doomsday’. Now, globally averaged concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has surged again to new records in 2016… and will not dip below pre-2015 levels for many generations.