MEXICO: Rural Poverty Has a Woman's Face

Some transformations occur so imperceptibly that people only become aware of them when the new reality has set in. That’s exactly what happened in Mexico’s countryside, where economic and social conditions have combined to put rural production largely in the hands of women.

DEVELOPMENT: Migrants Give More than They Take, Says U.N.

Often vilified and mistreated, migrant workers benefit both the countries they move to and the ones they leave behind, says the latest Human Development Report released Monday.

DEVELOPMENT: Plenty On the Plate – Part 2

"From a current 6.5 billion population, a billion don't get enough to eat right now. Extrapolate that to 2020, and you begin to recognise why this is not just a moral problem, it is a national security problem that has much more to do with civil strife, warfare, terrorism, immigration... This goes far beyond food."

DEVELOPMENT: Rome, Food Capital of the World – Part 1

It was once true that all roads led to this ancient capital. Today it is the furrows of maize, wheat and rice fields that take you to Rome, where the biggest global food organisations are headquartered, and the World Summit on Food Security (Nov. 16-18) is being organised.

RIGHTS-JAPAN: Get Cracking on Gender Equality

Japan's new female justice minister has promised to get serious about gender equality.

SENEGAL: Scrambling to Keep Up With Education For All

In Diohine, a village of some 3,000 inhabitants in the Fatick region of central Senegal, real progress has been made towards educating all children, in spite of a lack of infrastructure.

PERU: Guinea Pigs Spell Independence for Women

In a rural village in the Peruvian Andes, very near yet so far from the popular tourist destination of Cuzco, the guinea pig, a rodent native to the region, has become "woman’s best friend" – an important means for women to earn money to support their families, as well as to learn how to defend their rights.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Food Supply Hangs in the Balance

Rocketing food prices and hundreds of millions more starving people will be part of humanity's grim future without concerted action on climate change and new investments in agriculture, experts reported this week.

VIETNAM: Ethnic Minorities More Gender Divided

A drunk man slaps his wife, she hits the ground and the audience of mainly women laughs. At a question and answer session that follows in Tay, one of the many ethnic minority languages, women stand up to talk at length about why husbands shouldn't hit their wives and why, as women, they deserve equal respect.

SANITATION-ZAMBIA: Back Policy With Funding

Water- and sanitation-related diseases cost communities dearly, particularly in rural Zambia.

HEALTH: “Patent Pool” Could Ease HIV Drug Prices

Pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline hold the future welfare of poor people living with HIV/AIDS in their hands, argues the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, which is urging the companies to release their patents on specific HIV drugs into a collective pool that will increase access and affordability to treatment in developing countries.

HEALTH-LIBERIA: Rainy Season Deadly for Pregnant Women

As heavy rain hammers the grass thatch roof of her mud hut, Goromah Borbor huddles inside and quietly describes how her daughter Annie died while giving birth.

LATIN AMERICA: Black Population – Still Largely Invisible

Making the contributions by black people to the cultural heritage of Latin America visible is one big step towards pulling people of African descent out of the poverty and marginalisation in which so many still live, said participants at a regional seminar in the Uruguayan capital.

RIGHTS: Women’s Groups Take on Laws Based on Sex

When a landmark U.N. conference on women adopted a "platform for action" in Beijing in 1995, member states were urged to commit themselves to revoke all existing laws in their statute books that discriminate on the basis of sex.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: No More Blackouts In This Village

Travel through any Dominican town and you are likely to hear someone yell out, "llegó la luz" - the lights are back on! The country is notorious for its faulty and expensive electric service, which is more often dead than live.

ZAMBIA: 'Clear Lack of Commitment to HIV'

A United Nations mid-point review of Zambia's efforts towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), released in September, has revealed that HIV/AIDS might prevent the southern African country from meeting the targets.

Q&A: “Latin America Faces a Tough Balancing Act”

Chile is leading the way towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), while Honduras is seriously lagging behind, says Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

PHILIPPINES: Ban on Abortion Prevails

Sitting in an apartment in central Manila, 70-year-old Lydia (her second name has been withheld to protect her identity) speaks in hushed tones. A manghihilot, or traditional midwife, she is wary when talking about her experiences of abortion, an often-taboo subject in the Philippines.

HEALTH-ANGOLA: "It's Normal Here That Children Die Young"

Angelina Silva doesn’t remember the exact dates when her sons died. She just remembers their ages.

ZIMBABWE: Virgins Forced into Marriage to ‘Appease’ Evil Spirits

Three years after being seized from their families and forced to marry and have sex with adult men in a Shona ritual to appease an avenging spirit, five teenagers are facing a dismal reality.

MALAWI: Pre-school Education A Luxury

Less than a third of Malawi's children attend pre-school; the others will lag behind their peers for their entire school careers.