Malnutrition in Humanitarian Settings

As the rain hammers down, Aparo Dorin sits on the damp floor of her one-room hut in zone 12, block 5A, of the Palabek refugee camp in northern Uganda.

Global Aids Fight Running out of Steam, U.N. says

The global fight against Aids is floundering amid cash shortfalls and spikes in new HIV infections among marginalised groups in developing regions, Gunilla Carlsson, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said Tuesday.

How Best to Tackle Inequality in the 21st Century? Start with Climate Change

Do you prefer to hear good news or bad news first? I will begin by giving you the (unsurprisingly) bad news. Today’s world is an unequal place. Standards of living vary massively both between and within countries.

Privatization Increases Corruption

International financial institutions (IFIs) have typically imposed wide-ranging policy reforms – called ‘conditionalities’ – in exchange for country governments to secure access to financial assistance. While IFIs may demand anti-corruption policies, other IFI policy conditionalities, such as the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), can create new rentier opportunities, undermining government will and capacity to curb corruption.

The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Times

When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong. From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.

Treaty Violators Make Mockery of Refugee Convention

With the rise of rightwing nationalism, primarily in the Western world, an increasingly large number of countries are not only abandoning multilateralism but also violating international treaties and conventions signed and ratified in a bygone era.

It Takes Listening to Children to End Violence

We see many challenges that affect children around the world. Child marriage, corporal punishment, voting ages, air pollution, teachers going on strike…

Sexual Exploitation of Minors is a Crime Against Humanity

If they pay for it, men tend to believe they have the right to do anything to a woman’s body. You pay for your own entertainment without a thought about who you are paying and what cause you are supporting. Money is used as an excuse for and a means to oil a machinery that generates lots of profit while keeping pimps and other perpetrators out of the reach of the law.

Finland’s Education System Leads Globally

Finland has garnered attention for its top-notch education, and the newly appointed Minister of Education for Finland is planning to continue with the success of her country’s education system through various and innovative approaches.

Will a Global Fund Help Deliver UN’s Development Agenda?

The United Nations, which has been tracking both the successes and failures of its highly-ambitious Agenda for Sustainable Development, has warned that “progress has been slow” in many of the 17 Goals after four years of implementation.

Here’s How the World Can Be Better Prepared to Handle Epidemics

The 2019 G20 Summit was held recently in Osaka, Japan. The Summit ended with the “G20 Osaka Leaders’ Declaration”, which identifies health as a prerequisite for sustainable and inclusive economic growth, and the leaders committed to various efforts to improve epidemic preparedness. 

Heatwaves are a ‘New Normal’, Says Red Cross

It is barely the middle of the month, but the verdict is in: July has been hot.

How Skills Can Change Lives of World’s Youth

When the United Nations commemorated World Youth Skills Day, there was one stark reality that emerged out of the event: the world’s youth account for over a third of the global population of more than 7.7 billion people, and they also account for over a third of those unemployed across the globe.

UN Report Shows Mixed Results in Meeting SDGs

The United Nations launched its 2019 report on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), showing inadequate progress in the fourth year into the sustainable development agenda and highlighting the need for imminent global action.

The Road to Zero Hunger

Over 820 million people across the globe are currently undernourished, according to a new report released here.

US Defunds UNFPA for Third Consecutive Year– on Misconceived Assumptions

The Trump administration, in its continued hostility towards the United Nations-- and as part of its policy aimed at undermining multilateral institutions and international commitments-- has withheld its annual contributions to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) – for the third consecutive year.

Want to Inspire More People to Act on Climate Change? Broaden the Framing

“It has never happened before,” is a sentence that is becoming excessively common in the news  due to a changing climate where new extremes are becoming normal.

How Governments Still Allow Violence Against Children

Despite what you might have heard, things are getting better, every year. We are making amazing progress on fighting diseases, reducing the preventable deaths of children, and investing huge amounts to advance medicine and knowledge and to create better living conditions.

Crime Against Humanity and Individual Guilt

On 8 July, Bosco Ntaganda was by the International Criminal Court (ICC) found guilty of crimes against humanity. The 41-year-old rebel leader, nicknamed The Terminator, had ordered his fighters to "target and kill civilians", kidnap children to be brought up as soldiers and girls to become sex slaves, while personally partaking in the crimes. The Court had gathered evidence from 2,000 survivors from the rampage that Ntaganda and his army ran through the north-eastern Congolese region of Ituri, where beginning in 1999, 60,000 people have been murdered by warring rebel armies. Eighty witnesses testified directly during the court proceedings, thirteen were "experts" and the rest victims.

Spirit of Olympics & UN’s Development Agenda

As I reflect on the varied views and perspectives that emerged during the Human Rights Council’s Social Forum 2018--- where the theme of Olympic ideal and inclusive sports and their contribution to the promotion of the human rights, peace and development through sports were extensively deliberated on-- I observed an immediate connect with the preparations that are currently underway for the hosting of the Olympics 2024 in France.

Facebook and Friends Threaten to Libralize the World

On 17 June, a Facebook white paper proposed a new global digital currency it plans to launch in the first half of 2020. The Libra will be managed by a ‘not for profit’ Swiss-based Facebook-led consortium of ‘for profit corporations’, with Uber, eBay, Lyft, Mastercard and PayPal among its founding members.