A year that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is ending with famine in Africa, while still spreading death and misery through an enduring pandemic and a deteriorating climate crisis -- 2022 has been an apocalyptic warning of the frailty of our planet and the woeful shortcomings of humankind.
Day after day, international humanitarian organisations launch desperate appeals for funding to continue saving some of the many lives at high risk. When they get a handful of dollars –even just one million– from a rich country, they welcome it as manna from heaven.
Maliha looks confident in a café in Athens as she tells the story of her journey from Afghanistan to Europe. But as she starts recounting how a smuggler assaulted her in Turkey two years ago, she pauses, looking the other way and fiddling with her loose hair.
In September 2021, in the midst of a pandemic-related lockdown, a 15-year-old Muslim girl from Colombo, Sri Lanka was married off by her relatives to a much older man.
"Roraima did not have a Caribbean character; now it does, because of its growing relations with Venezuela and Guyana," said Haroldo Amoras, a professor of economics at the Federal University of this state in the extreme north of Brazil.
Mayra Rojas is one of a small but growing number of people in Cuba benefiting from the production of biogas, a renewable energy source still little used in a country highly dependent on fossil fuels.
Promoting innovation and technology to promote inclusive development means using new technologies to enhance equal access to services, eliminate discrimination, increase transparency, and create a stable and just future for all – especially the most vulnerable and marginalized.
The pillar coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus), which takes its name from its shape, is found throughout the Caribbean Sea, but its population has declined by more than 80 percent since 1990. As a result, the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed it as
"critically endangered" due to the effects of the human-induced climate crisis.
Health services don’t deliver themselves. It is the nurse who triages in the emergency department, the midwife who delivers babies and cares for mothers, the community health worker who gives babies vaccines, the care assistant who bathes someone at home, the surgeon who performs the operation, the anesthetist who blocks the pain, the pharmacist who matches the script to the medication, and the physiotherapist who restores movement.
Billy Offland (21), a British sustainability student, went on a two-year 'World Conservation Journey' to bring attention to the biodiversity crisis as the world seeks a deal to protect nature.
Climate change is the defining issue of our time. In the words of the UN Secretary General at COP27, “
we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” Cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050 is crucial when it comes to meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.
A new law banning LGBTQI ‘propaganda’ in Russia will further stigmatise LGBTQI people in the country and could worsen what is already one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics, critics have warned.
The social crisis and humanitarian emergency in Venezuela became international headline news again once the government and the opposition, bitter adversaries for two decades, agreed to direct three billion dollars in state funds held abroad to social programs.
Created in 2016, the Mexican Caribbean Biosphere Reserve (MCBR) hosts 1900 species of animals and plants and contains half of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the second largest in the world after Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
The external debt of the world’s low and middle-income countries at the end of 2021 totalled 9 trillion US dollars, more than double the amount a decade ago. Such debt is expected to increase by an additional 1.1 trillion US dollars in 2023.
Dr. Liesbet Steer is the Executive Director of the
Education Commission, chaired by UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of the ECW High-Level Steering Group, The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown. Under Liesbet’s leadership, the Commission has been at the forefront of new thinking in education financing calling for more effective and “progressive” domestic spending, innovative international and private financing (through the
International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd), the
Education Outcomes Fund and
Greater Share) and better coordination of external funding (including through her leadership of the
Global Education Forum and
Save Our Future).
One of the knock-on effects of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is that European countries have embarked on a ‘dash for gas’ to find alternatives to Russian energy supplies.
Solar energy is booming in Roraima, a state in the far north of Brazil, to the benefit of indigenous people and children in its capital, Boa Vista, and helping to provide a stable energy supply to the entire populace, who suffer frequent electricity shortages and blackouts.
Experts agree that African economies need to develop innovative approaches to deal with plastic production, which is set to double in 20 years – adversely impacting rural communities.
Calls for more government regulation and intervention are common during crises. But once the crises subside, pressures to reform quickly evaporate and the government is told to withdraw. New financial fads and opportunities are then touted, instead of long needed reforms.