The world is neither on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) nor is it leveraging emerging opportunities to effectively address global concerns such as extreme hunger, poverty, conflict, and climate change. Global concerns have outpaced existing structures for international cooperation and coping.
The World Health Organization's African regional office and partners published over 25 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals in 2023 as part of efforts to address the imbalance in global research and ensure that Africa was better represented in the production of health research academic literature, a new report shows.
Latin America’s workforce grew by nearly 50 percent in the two decades before the pandemic, helping boost economic growth. Now demographic trends are turning, and likely to weigh on growth in the coming years.
The World Bank has exaggerated probable gains from the African Continental Free Trade Area (
AfCFTA) to promote partial and uneven trade liberalisation that is unlikely to enhance development on the continent.
Parliamentarians from 112 countries have adopted the IPCI statement of commitment to protect and promote sexual and reproductive health rights, committing to the principle that "life or death is a political statement."
As IPCI Oslo drew to a close on Friday, April 12, 2024, parliamentarians adopted a new Statement of Commitment that was “the collective effort of every single delegate,” said Alando Terrelonge, MP from Jamaica and chair of the drafting committee.
Recently, the United Nations in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization
released a report that highlighted the impacts of climate change including on agriculture.
Climate change is exacerbating inequalities between and within countries, disproportionately affecting poor households in rural areas. In fact, we know that more than half of the resources of the poor – a large part of whom are small-scale farmers - are lost due to climatic hazards. This has negative impacts on the incomes of these people and their ability to meet their essential needs, including food.
"I'm more optimistic than before" about the goal of ending hunger included in the 2030 agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean, said FAO regional representative Mario Lubetkin in an interview with IPS.
Despite global childhood cancer mortality
rates dropping by half over the past 50 years, these promising statistics do not extend to Africa and the Global South, where limited resources mean that most cancers are diagnosed at advanced stages.
Wael Al-Hassan was returning from work in the Syrian city of Harim when he heard the sound of a baby crying.
He was returning from work on December 10, 2023. He stopped momentarily, turned on his mobile phone flashlight to investigate, and spotted a baby girl, around one month old, wrapped in a white blanket, lying by the roadside.
Quechua farmer Felipa Noamesa, who lives in the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco, prepares a cream of fava bean soup for breakfast every morning with bread and vegetable soup with noodles. Her children are grown up, so her priority is that her five-year-old granddaughter does not suffer from anemia or malnutrition, two problems she frequently sees in her community.
In the developing world, land rights for women remain tenuous in the agricultural sector. But if women farmers are recognized as landowners in their own right, it can lead to greater economic empowerment and be a positive step towards eradicating poverty.
This formed part of the wider discussions that are being hosted during the 68
th session of the Commission for the Status of Women (CSW68) in New York. The leading theme of CSW68 and its side events is the effort to accelerate gender equality by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions.
Like surface waters, groundwater resources frequently cross international boundaries, potentially igniting disputes among nations that rely on this essential resource. Disagreements over shared groundwater can arise from various issues, such as inequitable resource distribution, competing water needs and economic dependencies, governance challenges, and the varying effects of climate change on water availability.
I was born in Brakpan, Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in eSwatini (known then as Swaziland). People in these two countries share one
predominant fear: unemployment. Other worries in these countries and others in the region include unwanted pregnancies, low income and food safety. The diseases that are dreaded the most are cancer and diabetes. Feared infectious diseases include HIV-AIDS, COVID and cholera.
One of the key efforts under the
United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals is to provide poor households with access to clean cooking technologies to replace, in particular, the burning of solid biomass (
e.g., fuelwood and charcoal) in traditional open stoves that
kills millions of women and children.
Maternity protection is a human right enshrined in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Income security for newborn mothers ensures their mental and physical wellbeing and contributes to the healthy development of their infants.
Tsunza Peninsula is a natural wonder that sits just inside the many inlets of Mombasa Island on the border between Mombasa and Kwale Counties—a little-known spectacle of lagoons, islands, and thick mangroves in Kinango Sub-County, Kwale County, on Kenya’s coastal region.
The specter of blackouts hovers over the Mexican city of La Paz, the capital of the state of Baja California Sur in Mexico's far northwestern corner, as summer approaches, due to increased electricity demand from air conditioning and insufficient capacity in the local grid.
Studies have long shown that some women’s lower status in Nepali households could mean that they eat last and less and as a result lack nutrition. Experts are now looking into how this could affect their mental health, and if the growing impacts of climate change might amplify the process.
Selyn, a women-led handloom business, offers flexible employment and valuable income opportunities to about 1,000 women artisans and persons from marginalized groups in rural Sri Lanka.
Selyn develops and exports high-value craft products in global markets.
Counsel Hope
Yasmine Sherif is the Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW). A lawyer specialized in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law (LL.M), she has over 30 years of experience with the United Nations and international NGOs.