Just a month since the World Health Organization
declared the Coronavirus a public health emergency, it is now taking steps to contain misinformation being spread about the disease. Globally, there have been more than
82,000 cases of Coronavirus, which has claimed 2,800 lives -- the majority being in China, where the disease has been traced to
.
This year marks just ten years ahead of the deadline for completing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
These universally supported targets were always ambitious in their scope – yet what is clearer now than ever before is that quicker progress is crucial in the decade to come.
The United Nations, which has long preached the irrefutable concept of income equality to the outside world, is now accused of condoning wage discrimination in its own backyard.
Making sure that opportunities to enter the workforce are fair and rewarding for women benefits everyone. Yet, the average female workforce participation rate across countries is still 20 percentage points lower than the male rate, largely because gender gaps in wages and access to opportunities, such as education, stubbornly persist.
As efforts to contain the Coronavirus epidemic enter a critical stage, it is important to remember that the costs cannot be measured purely in economic terms, as the measures taken will have implications for life expectancy across the entire nation.
When President Saddam Hussein ran one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes in the militarily-volatile Middle East during 1979-2003, US newspapers routinely described him as “the strongman of Iraq” — as most journalists rightly view dictators worldwide.
When society doesn't act to prevent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) it has a massive economic cost -- over $1 billion -- on communities globally. And while the practice is starting to become less common over time, experts say a large number of women and girls still remain affected.
75 years ago following the end of the Second World War and the first time any state has dropped an atomic bomb, not once, but twice, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 51 countries from all continents met to create the United Nations.
There has been a disturbing increase in violence perpetrated against children in conflicts worldwide, coupled with almost total impunity.
Inequalities. The evidence is everywhere. And although they may be hard to measure and summarize, there is a sense in many countries that many are approaching a precipice beyond which it will be difficult to recover.
The world’s young activists, numbering over 3.8 billion, are on the war path.
The rising new socialist movements—which included “Black Lives Matter,” “Occupy Wall Street” “Un-Occupy Palestine” and "the #Me Too Movement" triggering women's marches— were aimed at battling racism, institutionalized inequalities, political repression and sexual harassment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu was slapped corruption charges last week while he was hobnobbing with US President Donald Trump in Washington. Bibi has, apparently, done his homework in psychology. He knew the quickest way to get around Trump was to flatter him.
With over 37,500 staffers in its global Secretariat payroll, the United Nations has gone high alert as the deadly coronavirus continues to take a heavy toll worldwide.
The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has described the much-ballyhooed US Middle East peace plan as “more like Swiss cheese-- with the cheese being offered to the Israelis and the holes to the Palestinians”.
Growing up in New York City in the 1970s, Edward Glaeser saw a great metropolis in decline. Crime was soaring. Garbage piled up on sidewalks as striking sanitation workers walked off the job. The city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.
The unease in the relations between the US and Iran have been in the international news for around a month now. Both sides have not shied away from using outright methods of warfare like the use of ballistic missiles and assassinations, along with attempts at economic and diplomatic sanctions.