RIGHTS-BURKINA FASO: Five Million To Get Precious Documents

Nearly 5.5 million people - mostly women and children - are to receive birth certificates in a country-wide exercise over the next 12 months. According to Burkina Faso's latest census, conducted in 2006, the rate of non-registration is particularly high amongst women and children, of whom three million (60 percent being girls) are not on the public registry.

GREECE: State Itself Becoming Xenophobic

"I can see migrants are the source of many problems," says Maria Nafpliotou, an employee at a music store in the city centre. "Nobody is happy to see them living around here, but I doubt slaying them is a solution."

U.S.: Obama Boosts Foreign, Development Aid Spending

True to his promises to bolster Washington's "soft power" abroad, President Barack Obama released details of his fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget that included significant increases in development assistance and other civilian-oriented tools of U.S. foreign policy.

GREECE: Financial Crisis Multiplies Migrant Miseries

The economic crisis is hitting migrants harder than most other people, and it looks set to get worse for them.

POPULATION: Asia Faces Lower Birth and Death Rates

Asia has long been touted as the world's largest and most populous continent with over 4.1 billion people, accounting for more than 60 percent of the global population.

AUSTRALIA: Asylum Seekers at Centre of Political Squabble

Australia’s opposition and governing parties have been admonished for attempting to make ‘political capital’ out of the recent spike in asylum seekers trying to reach the nation’s shores by boat.

MALAYSIA: Burmese Refugees “Treated Like a Commodity”

The mistreatment of Burmese migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Malaysia is the focus of a report released Thursday by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

NEPAL: Displaced Choose Urban Homelessness Over Rural Insecurity

Bishnu Maya Dahal, 51, dreams of going back to her village in eastern Nepal.

DEVELOPMENT: U.N. Triples Allotment for Population

The 1994 landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, fixed a target of 20.5 billion dollars for investments in population programmes worldwide for the year 2010.

GREECE: For Refugees, Could Afghanistan be Worse

For more than a decade migrants and refugees have been landing up at a slum in Patras town in the hope of catching a boat to Italy.

FRANCE: Film on Migrants Sparks Legal Debate

A new film on undocumented migrants has sparked heated discussion among the public and lawmakers here.

POLITICS: In Reversal, U.S. to Engage With Human Rights Council

The Barack Obama administration’s decision this week to seek a seat on the world’s top human rights body has affirmed the hopes of many activist groups that the United States will take a far more multilateral approach to diplomacy than in the past.

POPULATION: Global Financial Crisis Threatens Family Planning

The spreading global financial crisis is threatening to undermine another one of the U.N.'s major development and health goals: family planning.

AUSTRALIA: ‘Chinese Asylum Seekers’ Rights Were Violated’

A yet-to-be released report by Australia’s human rights watchdog into the 2005 treatment of a group of Chinese asylum seekers held at the immigration detention here has concluded that serious breaches of civil and political rights were made by the immigration department.

MIGRATION-US: Strained Detention System a Virtual Black Hole

The U.S. government has failed to uphold international human rights standards in its detention of immigrants and asylum seekers, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) said in a report released Wednesday.

HEALTH-PAKISTAN: Spacing Births for Mother and Child

Health experts in Pakistan are now concentrating on getting women from all strata of society to space births.

LABOUR-MALAYSIA: Hit Foreign Workers First Govt Tells Employers

An official guideline for employers to retrench their foreign workers ahead of local employees has alarmed civil society society groups who fear that indebted migrant workers could be sent home with inadequate compensation.

ENVIRONMENT-KENYA: Rainwater Harvesting: Two Birds With One Stone

Bitter irony: in recent years Nairobi has experienced severe flooding and widespread water shortages, due to poor urban planning and collapsing infrastructure systems that are failing to support the Kenyan capital's expanding population.

U.S.: Obama’s New Sudan Envoy Faces Big Challenges

As the humanitarian situation in Darfur deteriorates, President Barack Obama's new Special Envoy for Sudan is likely to find his inbox filled with urgent challenges - none more immediate than how to get relief groups back into the province.

RIGHTS-BURMA: Junta Lets UN Continue Helping Muslim Rohingyas

For now, the United Nations’ refugee agency has been given breathing room to operate in a western corner of military-ruled Burma, where humanitarian programmes offer some comfort to the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.

POLITICS-MADAGASCAR: Rajoelina Assumes Power

After 24 months as self-declared head of a transitional authority, the deposed mayor of Antananarivo, Andry Rajoelina, was confirmed as the new president of Madagascar by the Constitutional Court on Mar. 18.