Ivorian Cocoa Producers Cry Foul Over Sanctions

The international community's efforts to deny embattled president Laurent Gbagbo access to funds from cocoa exports have resulted in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Ivorian cocoa surfacing in neighbouring countries.

AFRICA: Pneumonia Vaccine Rollout Will Protect Millions

The Kenyatta International Conference Centre resembled one big nursery with parents and their crying babies. Hundreds of parents with their infants thronged the Centre where they received their first shot against pneumonia, and not even their tears as the shot broke through their skin could dampen the smiling faces of their mothers.

HEALTH: Market Interests Fight Iodised Salt

Russia and the Ukraine have been warned they are lagging behind the rest of the former Soviet bloc in introducing a simple and inexpensive public health measure that has curbed the incidence of mental disabilities among children across the region.

Q&A: Needing Surgery Shouldn’t Be a Death Sentence

Surgery saves the lives of millions of people around the world, but only a tiny percentage of them live in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where a shortage of skills, supplies and infrastructure can turn easily treatable accidents and illnesses into lifelong disabilities and even death.

WATER: Working Together on River Management

Postwar Angola is keen to expand irrigation for much-needed development, Namibia is prioritising clean drinking water and sanitation, while Botswana wants to preserve the integrity of the world-renowned Okavango Delta for tourism.

NAMIBIA: Water in the Kambashu

For Namibia's capital city, the goal of sustainable water and sanitation is a major challenge for the 21st century.

Botswana Parliament’s Speaker a Well-Loved Woman

It would have been hard for a teenaged Margaret Nnananyana Nasha to imagine that she would grow up to become one of the most powerful figures in Botswana's government.

Mauritian Women Dreaming of Active Politics

"We have had enough of the training given to us in cooking, sewing and household works... We now have another dream: of participating actively in the development of our island at decision-making level," says Marie-Anne Laganne, a political trainer at Women In Politics.

Q&A: ‘Women Are Shackled During Childbirth’

Female Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel are often denied legal representation and medical care while being housed in squalid conditions that can include sharing cells with rodents.

KENYA: Budget Too Small to Cover Health Needs

Professor Anyang Nyong'o might have guessed that a trip to the United States for treatment for prostate cancer would provoke a furore: he is the Minister for Medical Services.

“Yes I Can” Say Illiterate Adults in Guatemala

Concepción González, 42, never went to school. She remembers with frustration having to stamp her fingerprint because she couldn't sign official documents, and having to respond "I don't know" to her children's homework questions.

Tanzania Biofuel Project’s Barren Promise

An ambitious project to produce clean energy for the Netherlands and Belgium has degenerated into a controversial abuse of natural resources in Africa.

LATIN AMERICA: Fighting Rise in Non-Communicable Diseases

Some 50 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Latin America have formed a coalition to fight cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, diabetes and cancer, which have become the main causes of death and disability for people in the region.

WOMEN’S DAY: Without Grassroots, the Tree Will Not Stand

Women from grassroots organisations all across the globe arrived in New York this week for a five-day summit dedicated to bolstering female and community- based representation at all levels of political decision making.

MALAWI: In Praise of Dry Sanitation

At its best it is waterless, odorless, eminently affordable and has a rich fertiliser as byproduct, yet for residents of Malawi's informal settlements, dry sanitation retains a whiff of the unwanted.

Save Climate and Double Food Production With Eco-Farming

Eco-farming could double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change, according to a new U.N. report released Tuesday in Geneva.

WOMEN’S DAY: DRC Mobile Court a Sign of Hope

Eleven soldiers found culpable in the rape of more than 50 women in the Congolese town of Fizi Centre in January, have begun serving lengthy sentences in the provincial capital, Bukavu. Their speedy trial and sentencing by a mobile court is a welcome sign of a new commitment to ending impunity for sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

WOMEN’S DAY: Reflecting on Struggle for Equality in Kenya

"It is yet another significant day in the life of women across the world in the struggle for gender equality and equity. It is for this reason that women look forward to marking yet another International Women Day," says Janet Kanene, a gender studies university student.

WOMEN’S DAY: Overcoming Barriers in Central America

Amarilis Chilel, 15, left her hometown of Ixchiguán in northwest Guatemala to work as a domestic in the capital: a common story among rural girls and women in Central America. "I went to school up to fourth grade," she told IPS.

Enthusiasm For 2012 Earth Summit Lagging

Timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio 2012 Summit hopes to recapture the optimism of that earlier era.

Growing Humanitarian Crisis in Cote D’Ivoire

The U.N. has announced that some 200,000 people have already fled the Abobo neighbourhood, in the north of Abidjan. Each morning for a week now, luggage on their backs, bundles on their heads, the sick riding in wheelbarrows, new borns cradled in their arms, thousands of people have fled Abobo on foot.