Ishita Chaudhry spent the past 36 hours listening to U.N. delegates discuss population growth and development. She noticed that on “controversial” topics, such as sexual and reproductive rights, young people’s voices often get lost.
It is as if they have given up hope of ever seeing their girls again. They are an Adivasi family from a remote village in Assam state in India, nestled in the Himalayan foothills. The picturesque surroundings belie the hollowness they feel within.
A young mother – who only wants to be identified as Karren – beamed as she nursed her newborn baby at the University of Witwatersrand’s Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, in Hillbrow, South Africa.
The government of Ecuador is determined to curb the growing number of teen pregnancies, and has begun to knock down barriers that stand in the way of the right to a responsible sexual and reproductive life.
A U.S.-based civil society coalition is calling on Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration to keep spending on global health aid at current levels, warning that recent budget cuts risk a dangerous backslide in health and development gains achieved over the past three decades.
The Solomon Islands, a developing island nation in the south-west Pacific Islands, has one of the highest urbanisation rates in the region, and the basic service infrastructure is struggling to cater for the influx of people from the provinces to the capital, Honiara. Thirty-five percent of the city’s population, who live in informal settlements, are facing the health consequences of a dire shortage of clean water and sanitation.
Once dubbed "the most powerful woman in the world" by the London Times, Nafis Sadik learned at an early age that persistence leads to opportunities for change - and backlash from the Pope.
People disabled through bomb and suicide attacks by the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the nearby Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province are seeking support for themselves, and demanding strict action against the Taliban.
If Herod the Great was a controversial figure of his time, 2,000 years on the controversy isn’t about his legacy; it’s about who holds the rights to excavate and preserve his artefacts.
Japan prepares to mark the second anniversary of the Mar. 11 triple disaster - an earthquake, tsunami and a critical nuclear reactor accident - with much soul searching across the country.
Argentina is set to become the first country in Latin America to legalise surrogate motherhood as an option for heterosexual and homosexual couples or single people who cannot conceive but want to have a child who is biologically their own.
“In Gaza we don't lead normal lives, we just cope, and adapt to our abnormal lives under siege and occupation,” says Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and a long-time human rights and women's rights activist in the Gaza Strip. On International Women's Day, when many of the world's women are fighting for workplace equality and an end to domestic violence, Farra and the majority of Gaza's women fight for the most basic of rights.
Public health workers, activists and policymakers are stepping up a last-minute campaign to highlight the global health impact of historic, sweeping cuts to the U.S. federal budget due to go into effect Friday if Congress doesn’t act.
A major audit of the United States’ flagship global anti-HIV/AIDS programme, prepared for the U.S. Congress, notes “remarkable progress” over the past decade. However, it is also warning of insufficient monitoring and urging a stepped-up process of handing over greater control to partner countries.
The Millennium Development Goals challenged the world to cut extreme poverty in half, dramatically reduce child mortality, and make primary education universal, but Jody Heymann and Kristen McNeill say the world can do more.
The fight against female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) continues to gain traction around the world.
For the Samburu community in northern Kenya it was bad enough that Julius Lekupe had not sired a son - it was even worse that his eldest daughter refused to be “cut”.
What values does a Yemeni journalist who fuelled the Arab Spring hold in common with a former principal of the U.S. National Security Council? And how in turn will they see eye to eye with a Jordanian queen, or the president of Indonesia?
Every single day, 452 women in sub-Saharan Africa die from pregnancy-related causes; that’s 18 women every hour.
Journalists can play a crucial role in helping to shift traditional attitudes within societies where the cruel practice of female genital mutilation is an everyday reality.
A 25-year-old mother of five hailing from Senegal’s eastern Tambacounda province believes that contraceptives damage the womb and cause health problems in the long term, such as a rise in blood pressure and chronic headaches.