When the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development dubbed Rio+20 convenes in Brazil next year, Caribbean leaders want to ensure that the concerns of vulnerable low-lying coastal and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) will be heard.
A new paediatric formulation developed in Brazil holds out hope for a cure for over 90 percent of newborn babies infected with Chagas disease, a parasitic infection endemic in 21 Latin American countries, where it kills more people every year than malaria.
South-South cooperation can play a key role in boosting the economies of developing countries, but it is not going to replace North-South cooperation, says Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, president of the 66th session of the U.N. General Assembly.
Nepal will implement five projects with 110 million dollars sanctioned by the controversial Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), ignoring protestors who say this least developed country merits grants rather than climate loans.
Forget about finding Cantarrana on a map or travel guide to Cuba. "Nobody knew about us; we didn't exist," said one resident of this working-class neighbourhood on the west side of Havana.
The new deal for the ‘fragile states,’ from the g7+ – a group of 19 countries that struggle with poverty, instability and violent conflict - has been hailed as a major breakthrough at the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness here, earlier this week.
Gender champions have lauded the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness for providing gender equality and the empowerment of women a special session, but there is dissatisfaction with Thursday’s Busan outcome document.
Inclusiveness was the winner as donors, recipient governments, emerging economies, multilateral lenders and civil society representatives hammered out a consensual document at the close of a major meeting in this South Korean city to boost development aid effectiveness.
There are many inspiring stories that delegates from Africa attending the ongoing Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness can take home to provide insights to their respective countries on making the transformation to middle-income economies.
The idea of business as an effective development tool is gaining ground at Busan where hundreds of experts are gathered to charter a new chapter in global aid amidst growing political and economic uncertainty among donors.
Women toil in the fields for most of their lives producing food and strengthening the largely agricultural economy of African countries, but when their fathers, husbands or older sons die, they are no longer welcome on land they may have tended for years.
"Using high quality seed, I harvested 20 quintals (one quintal = 100 pounds), while with ordinary seed I only get 10 quintals," Vilma Rodríguez, a beneficiary of a seed production programme in the northwestern Nicaraguan province of Estelí, told IPS.
Poor countries have depended on rich nations to supplement their sector budget without which millions of people would have continued to live in abject poverty. Have the years of funding made these countries any less dependent?
Three countries in South America's Andean region, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, have a great deal to teach and share with those meeting in Busan, South Korean this week to discuss, among other things, how to make sure that development aid incorporates a gender focus in order to be effective.
Key actors meeting in Busan on Tuesday, the first day of the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), lay emphasis on inclusive ownership, mutual accountability and the platform of the groundbreaking 2005 Paris Declaration.
Gender responsive budgeting (GRB), a U.N. Women tool to curb inequality, "helps you think about people...and to use resources in a more effective manner," says Lorena Barba.
Rising food prices, natural disasters and an energy crisis that is turning wheat into ethanol instead of bread have raised the spectre of inadequate global food supply that hits the poor. This grim reality has finally turned the spotlight on agricultural aid and its link to development effectiveness.
With the majority of international troops expected to withdraw over the next three years, there are growing doubts over donors' commitments to continue to support Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world.
When the G-8 countries, comprising the world’s largest industrialised nations, decided that improving Internet access to developing countries should be a priority, scores of leaders from developing world opposed the move.
The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), starting in this port city on Tuesday, will examine why international donor assistance worth trillions of dollars spent over decades has failed to eradicate poverty.
Kenyan tea and coffee farmers remain disgruntled about the minimal profits they make selling their cash crops, the country’s leading foreign currency earners, as the government receives millions in funding for training and subsidies that most of these farmers are yet to see materialise.