Health

Global Public Investment: Time to Build the Movement Now

By David McCoy
Global Public Investment. A short and simple phrase. But one that means so much. At its most basic, GPI means public money being used to invest in goods and services that are of global benefit. There is no shortage of goods and services that need GPI, whether they be used to prevent or respond to environmental catastrophe, international war and conflict, or the next pandemic.

Refugees Face Often Neglected Mental Health Challenges – Report

By Juliet Morrison
While refugees globally face insecurity and uncertainty, a new World Health Organization (WHO) report highlights that they also face poorer health outcomes.

‘Aid Organizations Must Include the Youth Voice’ August 12, 2022—International Youth Day

By Yasmine Sherif and H.D. Wright
Today marks International Youth Day, a global celebration of the transformative power of young people. Introduced by the United Nations General Assembly in 1999, the event was inaugurated not only to observe the power of the youth voice, but to serve as a promise from those in power to activate the power of youth across the development sector.

UN’s Education Summit: An Opportunity to Create a Bottom-Up Global Governance

By Simone Galimberti
The upcoming summit on Education, part of the UN Secretary General’s ambitious agenda, can truly bring accountability and participation to the inevitably new ways education will be imparted in the future.

April Fool’s Inflation Medicine Threatens Progress

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
The world economy is on the brink of outright recession, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Ukraine war and sanctions have scuttled recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bringing Specialist Telemedicine to Children of Rural Kenya

By Wilson Odhiambo
New telemedicine technology, Daktari Smart, aims to mitigate the gap between child patients and medical specialists in rural Kenya. Officially launched in November 2021, the system was built to help sick children have easy access to medical specialists minus the cost of being physically present (remote/digital access). According to them, this will help optimise the delivery of healthcare systems.

‘Positive Sei’ Bringing Hope to Homes on the Airwaves

Tonga was still picking up the pieces after the Hunga volcanic eruption and tsunami waves when the pandemic reached its shores.

A Demographic Snapshot of the Philippines: One Step Forward, a Half Step Back

By Barry Mirkin
With the national election and transfer of power in the Philippines from outgoing President Duterte to incoming President Marcos Jr. in July 2022, it seems an appropriate time to briefly take stock of the country’s current demographic situation, as well as recent related developments.

To End AIDS, We Need to End Punitive Laws Perpetuating the Pandemic

By Suki Beavers
This week, the global HIV response community is gathering in Montreal to address the crisis of stalling progress that is putting millions of people in danger.

Introducing Hope Over Fate: the Story of Sir Fazle Hasan Abed and BRAC

By Scott MacMillan
About seven years ago, I started working on a project with Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, the founder of BRAC. It was originally supposed to be a memoir: the story of Abed, the mild-mannered accountant who would rid the world of poverty, as told by the man himself. I was privileged to be Abed’s speechwriter for the last several years of his life, and I would sit for hours listening to stories from his remarkable life: of his boyhood in British India, his love life in London in the 1960s, his three marriages, and how, in 1972, with a few thousand pounds from the sale of his flat in Camden, he launched a small nonprofit organization to aid refugees, originally called the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee. Many people would go on to call BRAC, which Abed led until his death in 2019, the world’s most effective anti-poverty organization.

Zimbabwe’s Unsung Living HIV/AIDS Hero Spreads Message of Hope

By Jeffrey Moyo
In 2001, when Reki Jimu was 30 years old, his wife died aged 27. The now 51-year-old Jimu said the couple’s two sons died prematurely. Both were underweight and frail, although the couple had been previously blessed with a baby girl, Faith Jimu, who is now a 29-year-old mother of three.

Not a World for Young People

By Jan Lundius
Many of us assume that an identification with a certain gender, race, nation or even age makes us particularly knowledgeable. When it comes to age, it is in most cultures of the world assumed that age and experience favour wisdom. I am not entirely sure about that, though I am convinced that as we grow older we tend to overestimate our own knowledge and importance. An arrogance that might burden and even marginalize the youth.

Rising Sea Levels, Drought, Hurricanes and Deforestation Threaten Latin America and the Caribbean

By Alison Kentish
The highest deforestation rates since 2009. The third most active hurricane season on record. Extreme rainfall, floods, and landslides displaced tens of thousands of people. Rising sea levels. Glaciers in Peru lost more than half their size. Add the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to the mix, and 2021 was a challenging year for Latin America and the Caribbean.

An Integrated Regional Response for the Sahel Crisis

By Benoit Thierry
The current Ukraine-Russia conflict is dominating the global media to the point of overshadowing longer protracted crisis that no longer make headlines, but are still rife. Such is the case with the on-going Sahel crisis, one of the world's most neglected ones, where acute poverty, the dramatic effects of climate change and rising armed conflicts have become the norm for more than a decade. A situation further exacerbated by the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.

Abortion in Canada—Legal for Decades But Hindered by Stigma

By Juliet Morrison
Toronto resident Miranda Knight describes her abortion experience as relatively simple. After finding out she was pregnant on a Wednesday in 2017, she booked an appointment at an available clinic and got one for the following Monday. She had the procedure that day and left the clinic by noon.

Reject CPTPP, Stay out of New Cold War

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury
Joining or ratifying dubious trade deals is supposed to offer miraculous solutions to recent lacklustre economic progress. Such naïve advocacy is misleading at best, and downright irresponsible, even reckless, at worst. TPP ‘pivot to Asia’ US President Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ after his 2012 re-election sought to check China’s sustained economic growth and technological progress. Its economic centrepiece was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Webinar: Lessons in Development from the Global South: 50 Years of BRAC


 
This virtual event was hosted by BRAC, the Permanent Mission of Bangladesh to the UN, and the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the UN on the sidelines of the 2022 UN High Level Political Forum.

Achieving the SDGs in Extraordinary Times

By Armida Alisjahbana, Woochong Um and Kanni Wignaraja
The start of the “Decade of Action” to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has also marked the start of an unprecedented period of overlapping crises.

News Fatigue, Anti-Vax and Wars

By Jan Lundius
During the beginning of the pandemic, people wanted to learn more about COVID-19. Enclosed in their homes they watched with fear and fascination how the pandemic swept over the world, while comparing numbers of affected people and the death-toll in different countries. Watching COVID’s rampage became a kind of horror show. However, already after a few months with death-tolls rising and isolation not being over anytime soon, psychological fatigue set in. Judging from media coverage it now appears as if the pandemic finally is over, which is far from being the case.

What Future for a World of 8 Billion?

By John Wilmoth
What does a young girl from Juba, in South Sudan, an 8-year-old boy living in the slums of Mumbai, in India, a young mother from the south of Lima, in Peru, and an 83-year-old man enjoying retirement in the suburbs of Stockholm, in Sweden, have in common?

India & China Continue to Lead –as World Population Projected to Reach 8.0 Billion

By Thalif Deen
India and China, two Asian nuclear powers who are also longstanding rivals embroiled in the geo-politics of the Indian Ocean region, have remained two of the world’s most populous nations accounting for over a billion people each. But as the world’s population reaches the 8.0 billion mark, come November, India is projected to surpass China.
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