‘Happy Prostitutes’ AIDS Campaign Sparks Debate

Happiness, the subject of endless philosophical discussions, has now become the focus of controversy in an HIV/AIDS prevention campaign aimed at prostitutes in Brazil. The campaign chief has been booted out and a further question has been raised: What are the limits of popular participation in the definition of public policies?

Q&A: U.N. Looks to High Seas to Alleviate Food Crisis

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is convinced there is sufficient global capacity to produce enough food to adequately feed the world's seven billion people.

OP-ED: Are We at the Tipping Point for Ending Hunger and Malnutrition?

Author Malcolm Gladwell draws on the science of epidemiology in his book "The Tipping Point" to explain how ideas spread through a population, in the same way as an infectious disease can proceed from a few cases to a full-blown pandemic.

Q&A: “The U.N. Is Too Slow to Respond to Crisis”

As the situation in Myanmar deteriorates, thousands of Rohingyas have fled the country in search of a safe haven.

Q&A: Women Hardest Hit by Growing Austerity Measures

The widespread financial crisis in Europe, and its negative fallout in the developing world, has triggered severe austerity measures worldwide.

The Future of the Pacific Ocean Hangs in the Balance

The immense scale of the Pacific Ocean, at 165 million square kilometres, inspires awe and fascination, but for those who inhabit the 22 Pacific island countries and territories, it is the very source of life. Without it, livelihoods and economies would collapse, hunger and ill-health would become endemic and human survival would be threatened.

Sierra Leone’s Child Trafficking to Blame for Street Kids

On a street corner in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, 12-year-old Kaita sits with a friend on a peeling steel railing watching the headlights of motorbikes cruising through the otherwise silent streets. It is after midnight, and motionless human forms lie curled up in doorways or stretched out on pavements nearby. For Kaita, these streets are home, and have been for almost six years.

International Community Urged to Declare “War on Food Waste”

A quarter of all food calories grown for human consumption is being lost or wasted, either purposefully or otherwise, according to new estimates.

Battle Against Hunger Lost Without Gender Empowerment

When the United Nations launched its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) back in 2001, two of its primary objectives were to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 and promote gender empowerment worldwide.

Gezi Park Highlights Years of Destructive Urban Development

Few imagined that the symbolic act of standing in front of bulldozers in Istanbul's Gezi Park in an effort to block a development project near the city's central square would have caused the reaction it did.

Tackle Malnutrition Now

Between 2010 and 2012, 868 million people worldwide were deemed hungry by a conservative definition. This figure represents only a small fraction of the world’s population whose health and lives are blighted by malnutrition.

Malnutrition Still Killing Three Million Children Under Five

Kevin’s Carter’s disturbing picture of the 1993 famine in Sudan won him a Pulitzer Prize.

In Besieged Refugee Camp, Syrian Medics Struggle to Provide

It was nine in the morning when the shell landed in front of nine-year-old Hella al-Abtah's house in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Hella survived the initial blast but was critically wounded in the head, and her father rushed her to the Palestine Hospital, blood pouring from the laceration.

Palestinian Child Labourers Face Grim Future

Hazem Maher, 16, from Hebron in the southern West Bank, works a backbreaking 12-hour day in the fruit and vegetable market in the city of El Bireh, next to Ramallah. He earns just over 15 dollars a day as a porter.

Despite Peace Talks, Forced Displacement Still Climbing in Colombia

Drugs and arms traffickers are muscling in on Colombia's Pacific coastal region, forcibly displacing local people, according to a new report by the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES).

Japan Seeks to Remake Asia-Africa Relationship

Acutely aware of China’s strong presence in resource-rich Africa, Japan, the world’s third largest economy, is beefing up its relations with the continent. Participants at a high-level donor conference hosted by Japan this week stressed the need for closer engagement, not through the traditional grants and assistance loans that have hitherto defined the relationship, but rather through trade and investment led by the Japanese private sector.

Good Health Lies Just Across the Border

Muzaffar Shah, a shopkeeper from Kabul, sits in a hospital waiting room, desperate for news. He has travelled nearly 300 km to get to the Khyber Teaching Hospital in Peshawar, capital of northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where his wife is now in intensive care.

Poverty No Longer Explains School Dropout in Argentina

Poverty no longer explains the high secondary school dropout rate in Argentina, one of the richest countries in Latin America.

Healing South Sudan’s Wounds

Susana Apai Wani has lived as a widow for more than two decades since her husband, James Wani, was arrested in 1992 by a policeman who accused him of collaborating with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which was a rebel political movement at the time.

Healthcare for Native People in Brazil Is Ailing

Healthcare for Brazil’s indigenous minority is in poor health, according to U.N. experts, missionaries, social workers and native people themselves.

Five Native American “Champions” Call for Change

It’s Sarah Schilling’s usual manner of greeting when she meets other members of her tribe: “Aanii Sarah Schilling n'diznakaas, which translates to ‘Hello, Sarah is my name’ in English,” she said.