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Friday, May 1, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Inequality
In Bangladesh, Gender Equality Comes on the Airwaves
Judging by how often they make headlines, one might be tempted to believe that women in Bangladesh don’t play a major role in this country’s affairs.
Land Seizures Speeding Up, Leaving Africans Homeless and Landless
There is a new scramble for Africa, with ordinary people facing displacement by the affluent and the powerful as huge tracts of land on the continent are grabbed by a minority, rights activists here say.
Women Still Struggling to Gain Equal Foothold in Nepal
Kali Sunar, 25, a resident of the Dumpada village in the remote Humla District in Far-West Nepal, lives a life that mirrors millions of her contemporaries.
Child Labour on U.S. Tobacco Farms: A Stubborn Problem in a Billion-Dollar Industry
For many young people, the summer is synonymous with free time, relaxation, or family vacations. For less fortunate kids the summer means labour, with scores of youths taking on part-time work to support their families.
Effective War Crimes Inquiry Could Heal Sri Lanka’s Old Wounds
Jessi Joygeswaran seems like your typical 23-year-old young woman. She has an infectious smile and laughs a lot when she talks. Like many other young women anywhere in the world, her life is full of dreams.
No Rest for the Elderly in India
As more and more people in India enter the ‘senior citizen’ category, ugly cracks are beginning to appear in a social structure that claims to value the institution of family but in reality expresses disdain for the bonds of blood.Opinion: Challenging the Power of the One Percent
When you are faced with the task of moving an object but find it is too heavy to lift, what is your immediate and most natural response? You ask someone to help you lift it. And it makes all the difference.
There’s No Such Thing as Equality in India’s Labour Force
It calls itself the ‘world’s largest democracy’ but the 380 million working-aged women in India might disagree with that assessment.
Afghanistan’s Economic Recovery: A New Horizon for South-South Partnerships?
First the centre of the silk route, then the epicenter of bloody conflicts, Afghanistan’s history can be charted through many diverse chapters, the most recent of which opened with the election of President Ashraf Ghani in September 2014.
Hold the Rich Accountable in New U.N. Development Goals, Say NGOs
When the World Economic Forum (WEF) met last January in Switzerland, attended mostly by the rich and the super-rich, the London-based charity Oxfam unveiled a report with an alarming statistic: if current trends continue, the world’s richest one percent would own more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth by 2016.
Multi-Drug Resistance Adds to Tuberculosis Epidemic in Papua New Guinea
Rising multi-drug resistance in patients suffering from tuberculosis, a debilitating infectious lung disease which mainly impacts the developing world, has led to a public health emergency in the southwest Pacific Island state of Papua New Guinea, according to state officials.
Four Fast Facts to Debunk Myths About Rural Women
We are lucky to live in a country that has long since abandoned the image of the damsel in distress. Even Disney princesses now save themselves and send unsuitable “saviours” packing. But despite the great strides being made in gender equality, we are still failing rural women, particularly women farmers.
Opinion: ‘We Owe It to More Than Half of the Global Population to Do a Better Job’
Undoubtedly, we are at a crucial time in the advancement of gender equality.
Women in the Philippines at the Forefront of the Health Food Movement
When Tinay Alterado’s team from ARUGAAN, an organisation of women healthcare advocates, visited Eastern Visayas, a region of the Philippines devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, they noticed that the relief and rescue sites were flooded with donated milk formula, which nursing mothers were feeding to their babies in vast quantities.
World’s Richest One Percent Undermine Fight Against Economic Inequalities
The growing economic inequalities between rich and poor – and the lopsided concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the world’s one percent - are undermining international efforts to fight global poverty, environmental degradation and social injustice, according to a civil society alliance.
In Thrall to the Mall Crawl and Urban Sprawl
There's little argument about the basic facts: It's ugly (think strip malls and big box stores). It's not very convenient (hours spent behind the wheel to get to work). And it wreaks havoc on the natural environment (lost farmland and compromised watersheds).
Unseen and Unheard: Afghan Baloch People Speak Up
Balochistan, divided by the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a vast swathe of land the size of France. It boasts enormous deposits of gas, gold and copper, untapped sources of oil and uranium, as well as a thousand kilometres of coastline near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.
Women Turn Drought into a Lesson on Sustainability
When a group of women in the remote village of Sadhuraks in Pakistan’s Thar Desert, some 800 km from the port city of Karachi, were asked if they would want to be born a woman in their next life, the answer from each was a resounding ‘no’.
Indonesia’s Palm Oil Industry in Need of a Makeover
Over the past three decades, 50 percent of the 544,150 square kilometres that comprise Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, has been taken over by the palm oil industry.
Canada’s Waste Still Rotting in a Philippine Port
Filipino Catholic priest and activist Reverend Father Robert Reyes, dubbed by media as the “running priest”, joined a protest of environmental and public health activists last week by running along the streets of the Makati Business District, the Philippines’ financial capital, to urge the government to immediately re-export the 50 Canadian containers filled with hazardous wastes that have been in the Port of Manila for 600 days now.
More Fighter Jets in Nicaragua, Second-Poorest Country in the Americas
Nicaragua, the second-poorest country in the Americas, is tapping into its depleted coffers to upgrade its ageing military fleet with costly new equipment from Russia – a move that has sparked controversy at home and concern among the country’s Central American neighbours.« Previous Page — Next Page »
As the international community takes stock of the progress over a decade and a half of Millennium Development Goals, rising inequality is the black cloud that hovers over achievements worth celebrating, when the world debates a development agenda beyond 2015. While inequality between countries has declined, many nations have seen a rise in the rift between rich and poor within their borders. Not infrequently, inequality is compounded by a lack of sound governance that allows for corruption, tax evasion and illicit money flows. A handful of countries, however, have managed to combine growth with a historic decline in inequality. IPS tracks the achievements of development, while closely examining obstacles to equal growth and forces driving progressive change.
This page includes independent IPS news coverage supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to put the issue of inequality higher up the news agenda during the run-up to the 2015 MDG deadline and the process to forge a new development consensus
