Poverty & SDGs

Barilla Foundation Report Highlights Need for Food Companies to Align with Sustainable Development Goals

By Alison Kentish
In the backdrop of rising hunger, half of the world’s population living on unhealthy diets, a third of agricultural produce lost to postharvest events, and waste, poverty in farming communities, a pandemic that laid bare the vulnerability of food systems to external shocks and unsustainable food production, the Barilla Foundation for Food and Nutrition has published a report which introduces guidelines for the private sector to fulfil its role in transforming global food systems.

COVID-19 Recovery Requires Justice Beyond Rhetoric

By Jens Martens
Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis have exacerbated rather than reduced global inequalities. On the one hand, the net wealth of billionaires has risen to record levels since the outbreak of the pandemic (increasing by more than US$ 5 trillion to US$ 13.1 trillion from 2020 to 2021), on the other hand, the number of people living in extreme poverty has also increased massively (by approx. 100 million to 732 million in 2020).

The Covid-19 Youth Employment Crisis in Asia & the Pacific

By Simone Galimberti
A pre-pandemic report published by the International Labor Organization, ILO, the Global Employment Trends for Youth 2020, offered a sober analysis on the job market prospects for youth.

Food Systems Summit’s Scientistic Threat

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Timely interventions by civil society, including concerned scientists, have prevented many likely abuses of next week’s UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). The Secretary General (UNSG) must now prevent UN endorsement of what remains of its prime movers’ corporate agenda.

South-South & Triangular Cooperation to Help Achieve UN’s Development Goals

By Adel Abdellatif
The 2021 high-level commemoration of the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation, organized ahead of the opening of the seventy-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly, provided an opportunity to discuss Southern solidarity in support of a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future while effectively responding to the global COVID-19 crisis across the global South.

A Regional Agreement for Healthy Eco-Systems in Latin America & the Caribbean

By Claudia Ituarte-Lima
In August 31st 2021, five Nations including Costa Rica - the country where the Escazú Agreement was adopted - announced publicly working towards a proposal for UN Human Rights Council to recognize globally the right to a clean, safe, healthy and sustainable environment at its 48th session in September.

End Vaccine Apartheid

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Vaccine costs have pushed many developing countries to the end of the COVID-19 vaccination queue, with most low-income ones not even lining up. Worse, less vaccinated poor nations cannot afford fiscal efforts to provide relief or stimulate recovery, let alone achieve Agenda 2030.

The Future of Food & Water Systems in Pakistan & Central Asia?

By Clara Colton Symmes
An intense monsoon season in Pakistan means the country’s food system faces the challenge of both extreme floods and extended droughts. In an effort to address these challenges through cross-sectoral collaboration, Dr. Mohsin Hafeez, IWMI’s Country Representative for Pakistan and Regional Representative for Central Asia, convened a regional dialogue in advance of the UN Food Systems Summit (which is scheduled to take place at the United Nations, September 23) .

South Korea’s Women Fire Back

By Hawon Jung
A strong movement of feminism is sweeping South Korea. While women feel empowered to stand their ground, the men are retaliating. When South Korean archer An San won two gold medals in just two days during the recent Tokyo Olympics, the response the 20-year-old received at home was a mixed. Some men were angered and said her medals should be taken away. Why? Because her short hair was a sign that she was a ‘man-hating’ feminist.

Fiddling in Nairobi While Africa Goes Hungry

By Timothy A. Wise
As the United Nations gears up for its Food Systems Summit September 23, the urgent need for structural changes in how we grow, harvest, distribute, and consume food has never been more apparent.

Data Platform Helps Pacific Island Countries Collect, Analyse and Act on Information

By Marty Logan
Do you know if midwife services are available at the Saupia Health Centre in Paunangisu, on the island of Efate in Vanuatu, in the Pacific Islands? I do, and I’ve never been within 1,000 kilometres of the facility — I found the information online within seconds thanks to a data platform called Tupaia.

Social Protection at a Crossroad—and Poverty On the Rise

By Annalena Oppel
How can we ensure a resilient and inclusive recovery from COVID-19? How can we hold on to the target of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030, with the pandemic still ongoing?

Advancing the Rights of Women Manual Scavengers in India

Manual scavenging is a caste-based profession that leads to discrimination and atrocities against those engaged in it. Generations of families from marginalised communities in India have been forced to continue in this profession because of social ostracism and a lack of alternatives.

Digital Tech can Help African Island States Cope with Climate Change

By Busani Bafana
Investing in digital technologies can help African small island developing states (SIDS), vulnerable to extreme weather events, cope with growing impacts of climate change, says the United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Eastern Caribbean Youth Join Calls for Resilient Global Food Systems

By Alison Kentish
As the international community prepares for the landmark United Nations Food Systems Summit, a pivotal gathering as part of a global goal to tackle food insecurity, hunger, biodiversity loss, and climate change through sustainable food production, Caribbean youth say the successful transformation of food systems must include young innovators.

Cuba, a Small Island State Seeking to Manage Its Vulnerability

By Patricia Grogg
Cuba, already beset by hurricanes, floods, droughts that deplete its main water sources, among other natural disasters, has seen its socioeconomic difficulties, similar to those faced by other Caribbean island nations, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Climate Disaster Migration Rises, Girls Get Married Off

By Manipadma Jena
When 11-year-old Mitali Padhi hugged her childhood friends to say goodbye, she felt a deep-seated foreboding.

Southern African Migrants Excluded as COVID-19 Pandemic Grows

By Kevin Humphrey
Migrants across the Southern Africa region are massively disadvantaged as they find themselves excluded from vaccine programmes – even when the global vaccine initiative COVAX often funds these programmes.

Salvadoran Migrants Still Look to the U.S. to Lift Themselves Out of Poverty

By Edgardo Ayala
The Joe Biden administration's call for undocumented Central American migrants not to go to the United States, as requested by Vice President Kamala Harris during a June visit to Guatemala, appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

How to Feed the World Without Starving the Planet is a $15 Billion Question

By Ruben G. Echeverría
A population of more than 9 billion people, hotter temperatures, decaying ecosystems and increasingly severe natural disasters. That is what our world is facing by 2050 because of climate change.

Community-Based Solutions Alleviate Water Shortages in Central America – In Pictures

By Edgardo Ayala
Access to water is a constant struggle in Central America, a region with more than 60 million people, many of whom live in rural areas where conditions for good quality water and enough for food production are becoming increasingly difficult.
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