When is Universal Health Coverage Good for Attaining Universal Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights?

This is a special year for all rights-based health advocates, as we celebrate 25 years of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

Mo Money Mo Solutions – the African Development Bank’s Ready to Double Investment Across the Continent

Buses carrying cross-border traders and goods from Cotonou in Benin to Bamako in Mali have recently been using the Lomé route — travelling through the capital of Togo and then getting onto the Ouagadougou corridor on their way to the Malian capital.

Zimbabwe’s Inflation Makes it Hard to Keep Track of Cost of Living

Stung by the country’s spiralling inflation, Zimbabwe’s government workers took to the streets this week for the first ever police-sectioned march demanding improved wages.

Nearly Half of Nepali Children Still Malnourished

For the first two decades after 1990, Nepal took great strides in reducing malnutrition. But progress has stalled.

Four Ways the African Development Bank Can Support a More Secure Africa

Free movement of people and goods across Africa increases the risk of transmission of infectious diseases. The continent must realise that it is no longer a question of if disease outbreaks will occur, but instead, of when, and how fast.

Urgent Need to Replace Competition with Cooperation in the Aral Sea Basin

The water resources in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin support the lives and livelihoods of about 70 million people — a population greater than Thailand, France, or South Africa.

Prepare to Win: Tsunami Awareness and Preparedness

Once considered rare in their occurrence, in the last 10 years tsunamis have struck nearly every year: from Samoa to Chile, and from Iceland to New Zealand.

No Region is Immune from Rising Inequalities, Trade Tensions & Declining Growth Rates

We are facing tense and turbulent times around the globe. Rising inequality is a danger everywhere. Trade and technology tensions are building. Growth forecasts are being revised down. Unease and uncertainty are going up. This is a global phenomenon. No region is immune.

Locked Out – Nigeria’s Trafficked Children Have Never been to School

“Human trafficking is when someone is taken from Nigeria to another country to be a prostitute. Or, to do other illegal jobs that are not good for humanity,” said Kingsley Chidiebere, a commercial motorcycle rider in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

Going with the Wind: Transition to Clean Energy in Latin America & the Caribbean

The UN Climate Action Summit 2019, which took place in the days leading up to the 74th UN General Assembly, delivered new pathways and practical actions for governments and private sector to intensify climate action.

Red Alert for Blue Planet and Small Island States

Barely a week passes without alarming news of the most recent scientific research into the global climate crisis compounding a growing sense of urgency, particularly the impact on small island states from rising sea levels and extreme weather.

Solar Cookers Produce More Than Food for Mexican Women

The sun's rays are also used to cook food and thus replace the burning of firewood and gas, improve the health of local residents and fuel the energy transition towards the use of renewable sources - the objectives of an enterprise in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Mother Earth’s Café Dares Climate Crises in India

The sun has barely risen when Phlida Kharshala shakes her 8-year-old grandson awake. He hoists an empty cone-shaped bamboo basket on his back, sets the woven strap flat across his forehead and off they go into the wilderness.

UN Turns to Global Investors for Billions Needed for its 2030 Development Agenda

A Republican US Senator of a bygone era was once quoted as saying “a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.”

World Closer Than Ever to Seeing Polio Disappear for Good

In a “historic achievement for humanity”, two of three wild poliovirus strains have been eliminated worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday, following the conclusion by a group of experts that WPV3, type three of the disease, has been eradicated completely.

Insurance Scheme Offers Hope for Drought-stricken African Farmers

A partnership between United Nations and African Union (AU) agencies will help African economies insure themselves against the droughts and other extreme weather events that plague the continent, organisers say.

Swiftly Ending Tobacco Epidemic Requires Government Action, Not Empty Promises

New information published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report shows that action taken by just 11 countries – most of them low- or middle-income – has resulted in 20 million fewer adult tobacco users in 2017 compared with 2008. Seventy percent of the world’s tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries.

Development Banks Needed to Finance Sustainable Development

Public or state development banking will be vital to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, argues UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Report 2019 (TDR 2019). Ongoing World Bank led efforts seek to leverage private finance via shadow banking by using public money to guarantee handsome returns managed by giant investment houses. Such financialization introduce new costs and risks to financing investments for sustainable development, decent work and renewable energy.

Private Finance and Agenda 2030: Way Off-Track

Four years ago, UN member states proclaimed their ambitions for development in a document named “Transforming Our World”, also known as Agenda 2030. Today, according to several assessments including of the UN’s inter-agency task force on financing for development (FfD) transformation has fallen off-track. It has received too little money, political commitment and action to change the workings of the global economy. Agenda 2030 spells out the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) needed to ‘transform our world’.

More than 90 per cent of Africa Migrants Would Make Perilous Europe Journey Again, Despite the Risks

A landmark UN migration study published on Monday shows that 93 per cent of Africans making the journey to European countries along irregular routes, would do it again, despite facing often life-threatening danger.

Agro-tech Offers Answers for African Farmers at Iowa Meet

Experts vaunted new strains of seeds, drone aircraft and other technological breakthroughs as solutions-in-the-making for farmers in Africa, where hunger, drought and food price hikes are continent-wide problems.