AUSTRALIA: More Suicides, No Lessons

Supporters of asylum seekers here say that the government’s response to recent suicides in Australian immigration detention centres ignores what is already well-known: that indefinite, long-term detention in crowded facilities results in deaths.

CUBA: Young People Look Abroad

While for their parents, leaving Cuba was a traumatic event because of the impossibility of returning, for younger generations, "moving abroad" is becoming more and more of a normal decision, just another alternative for the future.

LATIN AMERICA: Lack of Prevention, Timely Treatment Make Women Vulnerable to Cancer

In many cases, cancer is preventable, treatable and curable if detected on time. But the fate of millions of women with the disease varies enormously, depending on where they live.

A Table for Nine Billion

As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund convene for their annual Spring Meetings here, soaring food prices are high on the agenda, prompting some analysts to fast-forward to 2050 and the question of how to nourish the mid-century's estimated world population of 8.9 billion people – the majority of whom will live in developing countries.

PHILIPPINES: Religious Groups Weigh In on Reproductive Health Debate

In a country where an estimated 4,500 women die every year due to complications during childbirth, the enactment of a reproductive health (RH) policy is said to be a measure that could save lives.

Vast Majority of Stillbirths Found in Developing Countries

According to a special series in the medical journal The Lancet presented in New York Wednesday at the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, over 2.6 million stillbirths occur worldwide annually, affecting mostly African and Asian women who lack proper access to health care and facilities.

U.N. Decries Stagnant Funding For Population Goals

As the international community readies to cope with a rising world population of some seven billion people by the middle of this year, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns that financial assistance for population-related activities has made no visible gains since 2008.

CUBA: Today’s Youth, As Diverse As the Times

Mariana García is a child of the 1990s, when Cuba was in the grip of the severe crisis that hit the island after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist bloc. She grew up bombarded by the first video games and surrounded by people who talked more about how to get by than about their dreams and ideals.

Libyan Exodus Shrinks Remittances

The exodus of migrants streaming out of Libya due to ongoing unrest has highlighted the heavy dependence of some countries on remittances from their citizens working abroad. In several countries this flow has now become choked.

Smart Planning for the Global Family

When it comes to population growth, the United Nations has three primary projections. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.5 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility, has population peaking at eight billion in 2042 and then declining.

Migrant Workers Caught in Whirlwind of ‘Arab Spring’

Migrant workers caught in the crossfire of the ongoing upheavals in Bahrain and Libya highlight the need to develop international migration policies based on migrants' rights rather than the economic interest of labour sending and receiving countries, knowledgeable sources say.

Broken Promises Loom Large in 2012 Election Run-Up

Just days after United States President Barack Obama announced his reelection campaign for the 2012 run-off via a Youtube video, the White House is poised on the brink of its first shutdown in 15 years, with budget wars, an immigration maelstrom and determined opposition to the administration's seeming tolerance for union-busting barricading the path to a second term for the Democrat incumbent.

SRI LANKA: Finally Dengue Takes a Beating

Dengue infections and deaths here have declined significantly this year.

SOUTH AFRICA: The Invisible People

Since psychiatric care was decentralised last year in South Africa, patients have been moved from hospitals into community day hospitals that don't have the appropriate resources to deal with mental illnesses. As a result, many of society's most vulnerable have slipped through the cracks in the system and now walk the streets like invisible people.

Ghana Border Town Braced for Influx of Ivorian Refugees

As many as a million people have fled Côte d'Ivoire's commercial capital, Abidjan, due to intensified fighting. Many people are fleeing to areas in the north, centre and east of the country as thousands of youth answered a call to join forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo; others are trying to leave the country.

Foreign Labourers Targeted Throughout Bahrain

As protests in Bahrain continue, increasingly migrant workers are being victimised in violent hate crimes.

PAKISTAN: And Then There Was Light

Hasan Ibrahim’s tea stall is the busiest place in the sleepy, sand-dune covered village of Sholani, proof of the economic and social change the arrival of electricity has ushered in.

PAKISTAN: Citizens and NGOs Step Forward to End Illiteracy

The man known as ‘Master Ayub’ holds classes for free, between three and seven o’clock. His classroom is a public park, and his students are street children six to 16 years of age who otherwise would be picking trash, begging, or slowly becoming petty thieves.

JAPAN: Vulnerability and Uncertainty Prevail In Wake of Nuclear Disaster

Accidents at four nuclear power reactors hit by the earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima have left thousands of residents in the vicinity facing an uncertain future as they prepare for evacuation orders to protect them from dangerous radiation contamination.

Cambodia Struggles to Stem Domestic Worker Abuse

Cambodia’s fledgling domestic worker export industry continues to come under scrutiny amid allegations that women have been forcibly detained in privately run training centres.

CAMBODIA: Botched World Bank Project Leads to Thousands of Evictions

The World Bank botched the handling of an ambitious multi-million-dollar land- titling project in Cambodia and has done little to protect thousands of people in a lakeside slum from eviction.