Gender-Based Violence Wracks Malawi Refugee Camp

At the age of 13, Chantal Kifungo* is mother to a ten-month-old baby girl. It wasn’t her choice. Almost two years ago, she was raped by her stepfather – and fell pregnant with his child.

Biodiversity Talks Bog Down over Genetic Resources

While officials meeting in Montreal, Canada failed to finalise a key protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Tuesday, biodiversity is scheduled to be at the top of Wednesday's agenda of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Price Spikes Raise Spectre of Another Food Crisis

While global food prices declined for the first half of this year, they have spiked in recent months, according to a new World Bank publication, and this volatility could in turn push up the local food prices of the world's poorest and most malnourished countries.

MEXICO: Gender Violence Hits Behind the News

Amalia is an indigenous Maya girl from a rural community in southern Quintana Roo, on Mexico's Caribbean coast. She is 11 years old, and in August became the youngest mother in the country when she gave birth to a baby girl, 51 cm long and just under three kg.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Health Inequity Slows Decline in Child Mortality

Cambodia’s partial success in reducing child mortality rates has exposed a fault line of inequity, one that underscores the advantage that the country’s urban population has had over the rural poor.

DEVELOPMENT: A Fat Cat Tax for Lean Times

As world leaders convened Monday for the first day of a summit dedicated to resuscitate efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the question of how to finance countries' acceleration efforts looms large.

MOZAMBIQUE: BHP Billiton Plans Six Month Bypass of Smelter Smokestack Scrubbers

Civil society groups are challenging a six-month authorisation granted aluminium giant BHP Billiton to emit potentially dangerous fumes from its Mozal smelter into the air without treating them first.

ETHIOPIA: Children Delight in Tales on Wheels

The middle of September marked the beginning of Meskerem, the first month, the beginning of a new year, just after the girls dance in Tigray to mark the end of the rains and the coming of the summer in a ceremony called Ashenda. Children in Mekelle and other parts of this region in northern Ethiopia had added reason to rejoice.

DEVELOPMENT: U.N. Chief Looks Beyond 2015 Deadline

As more than 140 world leaders began a three-day anti-poverty summit meeting Monday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon looked far beyond the 2015 deadline for sustainable development the world is desperately in need of.

MILLENNIUM GOALS: A Question of Political Will

"I am not pessimistic, but I am realistic. Under present conditions and the prevailing system of world government, the Millennium Development Goals simply cannot be achieved," Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said in an interview with IPS.

South Urged not to Replicate Old, Unequal Models

South-South cooperation is set to be a key issue during the three-day summit beginning today that will bring together some 140 world leaders to reaffirm their commitment to achieving the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

No Glass Ceiling in Dreams of Women Workers

"There are no ceilings in our dreams; we want to transform young women, tell them there is a way for them to be happy," says Elza Santiago, a resident of a "favela" or shantytown in Brazil who defines her mission as "mixing feminism with work."

DEVELOPMENT: Bridging the Chasm Between Rhetoric and Reality

On the eve of Monday's highly-anticipated U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit in which world leaders will gather here to reaffirm their commitment to the eight goals, civil society remains deeply sceptical.

South Africa’s Progress on MDGs Questioned

With five years left till the Millennium Development Goals' 2015 deadline, civil society groups say South Africa has made progress on some goals but regressed on others.

MEXICO: Global Forums to Focus on Abuses Against Immigrants

Civil society organisations from around the world are revving up to highlight how governments -- especially the United States and Mexico -- violate the rights of immigrants.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Social Protection, a Human Right?

Without contributions from well wishers and government grants of between 68 and 104 dollars per month per child, the House of Mother and Child in Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg, would barely be able to provide for the 18 vulnerable children who call the place home.

Hunger Drops Mere Half a Percent over Last Decade

Ten years after setting the goal of halving the proportion of people suffering from poverty and hunger by 2015, only mixed success can be found for the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the degree of success is dependent not only on what country is examined but which evaluation is used.

Women Make Their Mark on South American Politics

If Brazilian voters elect a woman president next month, what might have appeared to be isolated developments in Chile and Argentina would start to look more like a trend in the southern countries of South America.

CARIBBEAN: Still Fighting HIV Stigma After 30 Years

An inescapable fact of living in societies that are as small and highly personalised as those in the Caribbean is that information travels very quickly and not always very accurately.

BRAZIL: Small-scale Palm Oil Production Is Women’s Work Too

"This isn't women's work," they told her. But Benedita Nascimento is now one of the most outstanding success stories of a family farming programme involving palm oil production in Brazil's eastern Amazon jungle.

Restoring Ethiopia’s Forest Cover

Mesfin Mengistu has been growing trees on his two-hectare farm in Menagesha Woreda for years.