World Bank Mulls First Strategic Overhaul in Two Decades

World Bank President Jim Kim has formally put forward a major new proposal to refocus both the bank’s priorities and how it pursues those aims.

Improved Seed Improves Ethiopian Farmers’ Lives

Ethiopian farmers are learning that seed security is the basis of food security.

Syrians Struggle with a Life of Sorts

Free Syrian Army fighters stand guard over the state cable company premises to avoid looting in Khan Al-Assal, a district 14 kilometres west of Aleppo. Much of the rest of the place seems a nightmarish ghost town.

Risk Management Can Ease Poverty, World Bank Says

Successful risk management can be a powerful tool for development, the World Bank said Monday in its annual World Development Report (WDR).

Some Rice, Served With Rainwater

The quiet Cambodian village of Chouk, set in the beautiful forests of the Cardamom Mountains near the Thai border, seems peaceful. But things are difficult in this largely empty village of simple wooden houses, populated mainly by children and the elderly.

Africa’s Growth Story Brightens

Not far from the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Ethiopia's capital city of Addis Ababa, a young woman named Bosena, 25, sits on the side of a busy road with a baby in her arms.

Foreign Policy Elite Frets over Washington Shutdown

Three days into the partial shutdown of the federal government, foreign policy mavens are voicing growing concern about the closure’s impact on U.S. credibility overseas.

For the Disabled, Progress Unearths More Questions

When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a recent high-level meeting on disability and development that promised a place for the issue in the post-2015 agenda, he cited three examples of incapacity.

Ugandan Women Put On Their Boxing Gloves

Helen Baleke took up boxing at 16, after she was attacked by a man in Kampala’s Katanga slum. But the beating turned her into what she is today – one of only several female Ugandan amateur boxers.

Relief Brings Its Own Disasters

In Uttarakhand, the small Indian state in the Himalayan foothills that was a victim of flash floods that killed at least a thousand people in June this year and uprooted thousands of families, the story is told of a child who went every day to the helipad, believing his father will return when, in fact, the father died in the floods.

Hunger Decreases, but Unevenly, U.N. Reports

Some 842 million people still suffer from chronic hunger, according to the State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2013), published Tuesday by the three Rome-based U.N. food agencies.

U.S. Government Shutdown Could Hit Foreign Aid

A deadlocked U.S. Congress proved unable to settle budgetary differences late Monday evening, leading to a federal government shutdown that could soon be felt by foreign aid programmes and their recipients.

Disabled Make Do with Scraps from the Aid Table

Amidst the incomprehensible suffering that followed the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, international aid agencies rushed to provide services to the displaced and injured.

The Medicines Are Fake, the Illnesses Real

Reports of fraudulent medicines in the south-west Pacific island states of Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea have drawn attention to the need for more public awareness of the lethal trade and its tragic consequences.

Nairobi Attack Exposes Flawed U.S. Terror Policies

In the aftermath of the worst terror attack in East Africa in three years, foreign policy scholars here are urging the U.S. government to rethink its counter-terror policy in the region.

Q&A: Congolese Wrongly Branded as “Pathological”

Western analysts all too often take a distorted and reductionist approach to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), says Kai Koddenbrock, who analysed more than 50 policy papers for a study published in the journal International Peacekeeping in November 2012.

U.S. Urged to Curb Militarisation in Latin America

The United States needs to phase down its drug war and tighten the reins on its cooperation with local militaries and police in Latin America, according to a new report released here Wednesday by three influential think tanks.

OP-ED: Financing of Disaster Risk Reduction Needs Urgent Reform

Over 20 years, disaster losses in developing nations have amounted to 862 billion dollars (a considerable under-estimate). During this period the international community has spent just 13.5 billion dollars on disaster risk reduction (DRR), equivalent to 40 cents of every 100 dollars of development aid – this has to change.

Nigerians Uncertain of Future in Bakassi Peninsula

Thomas Effiom, a 35-year old fisher in Jabane, a small locality in Cameroon’s Bakassi Peninsula, scoops off floodwaters from the muddy floor of his house. It is a ritual he performs each time the Atlantic Ocean overflows.

The Emerging Economies and the G20 Summit at St. Petersburg

The eighth G20 Summit convened in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5-6, 2013 was dominated by the Syrian crisis, deflecting attention from the mandate of the gathering to serve as the premier forum for international economic coordination.

Forest Communities Draw a REDD Line

As the ink dries on a 3.6 million dollar agreement between Uganda and the World Bank to support the country's preparations for REDD, some analysts are pessimistic over the mechanism's potential.