VENEZUELA: Grassroots Empowerment for Women

In Venezuela "women have passionately embraced community activism, taking on a more committed and active role, and this is reflected in the increasing female participation in neighbourhood assemblies," Alba Rojas, spokeswoman for a community council in Tacagua, a township that spreads along the Caracas-La Guaira highway, told IPS.

DEVELOPMENT: Global Campaign to Salvage U.N.’s Health Goals

The global economic crisis, which has pushed millions more into extreme poverty, is threatening to have a devastating impact on the health of women and children.

HEALTH-MOZAMBIQUE: Scant Progress With Paediatric HIV

Christina M.* looks worried as she cradles one of her sick twin babies. The mother of five already lost twins and another baby to illness soon after childbirth a few years ago.

ZIMBABWE: Tsvangirai Gets Obama’s Seal of Approval

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai received U.S. President Barack Obama's seal of approval and a promise of 73 million dollars in education, health, and governance-related assistance after a mid-afternoon meeting at the White House here Friday.

HEALTH-KENYA: Two Dollars And Change: Enough To Save a Mother’s Life

At the age of 14, Zulekha Mumma delivered her first child. At 21, the birth of her seventh child killed her. She died from excessive bleeding in her home in Nyalenda, a slum on the outskirts of Kisumu city in western Kenya, some 400 kilometres from Nairobi.

ENVIRONMENT-ZIMBABWE: Farmers Go to War Against Lantana Camara

Armed with picks, axes and hoes, a group of enthusiastic villagers break into song: "Randana kamara wakaipa, Randana kamara wakashata.Watora ufuro hwezvipfuyo, wauraya mombe." ("Lantana camara, you are evil. You have taken over grazing land for our livestock, you have killed our cattle.")

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Groundwater Still Underutilised

Despite the significant role groundwater could play in alleviating poverty, improving food security and contributing to overall development in Southern Africa, a lack of skills, finances and awareness of the resource means only a small percentage of the region's supplies are tapped into.

Q&A: Why Sanitation Is the Forgotten Sister

As part of the International Year of Sanitation in 2008, Zimbabwe developed a national strategy for sanitation, launched in February 2008. Just five months later, a cholera outbreak that was to claim over 4,000 lives began.

SWAZILAND: Donor Support For Health Sector Drying Up

As the global economic downturn begins to take its toll on developing countries, Swaziland's health system - already strained by the burden of HIV/AIDS - has come under severe threat. The third of the national health budget which comes directly from donor agencies is abruptly drying up.

INDIA: Farm Suicides Turn Children Into Farmers

Eleven-year-old Digambar Rathod looks older than his age. Shy and uncertain, he stares disconcertedly at the garlanded photograph of his father Jaideep, a 42-year-old cotton farmer who committed suicide on Jan. 1, 2009 in Tiwsala village, in eastern Maharashtra state’s suicide-torn Yavatmal district.

MILLENNIUM GOALS: Nicaragua Can’t Afford to Cut Poverty Rate

The global recession, internal economic contraction and loss of vital international aid are further distancing Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the Americas, from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

HAITI: Recruiting Far and Wide for Great Young Minds

When Garry Delice arrives at St. Joseph, a public high school in rural Haiti, something’s amiss. The cinderblock building is full of students, but no teacher can be found. Young men and women are finishing exams, and the staff has already left for the day.

DEVELOPMENT: Thousands March as Food Crisis Deepens

An estimated 300,000 people across the globe hit the streets Sunday to support the World Food Programme (WFP) and its mission to feed hungry schoolchildren and battle malnutrition worldwide.

URUGUAY: ‘Just Like a Daughter’ – Until You Exert Your Rights

"If you protest or stand up for your rights, they start playing little psychological games with you. You immediately go from being the darling of the household, ‘just like a daughter,’ to being treated rudely, and sometimes they even accuse you of stealing."

POVERTY-ANGOLA: NGOs Sceptical of Govt’s Rural Development Plans

In an attempt to reduce rural poverty, Angola’s government plans to diversify its oil-focused economy by trying to restore the country’s once-booming agricultural sector.

RIGHTS: Honour Pledges on Reproductive Health

In 1994, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) proposed a groundbreaking shift in the approach to reproductive health: women's reproductive capacity was to be transformed from an object of population control to a matter of women's empowerment to exercise personal autonomy.

LEBANON: Women Battle for Citizenship Rights

One can be born in Lebanon and live here all one's life, and still not be a Lebanese citizen. Lebanon is one of few remaining countries in the Middle East where a mother is unable to pass citizenship to her children.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Bolster Natural Carbon Absorption, Says UN

Expanding the capacity of natural areas for capturing and storing carbon is one of the keys to curbing climate change, and would be a relatively low-cost solution that would also improve the quality of life of millions of farmers, the United Nations said Friday.

HEALTH: WHO Urges Universal Rotavirus Vaccine

The World Health Organisation (WHO) urged Friday that rotavirus vaccines be included in routine immunisation schedules of countries around the world in order to provide global protection against the most common and lethal form of diarrheal disease.

COLOMBIA: The Farmers Who Abandoned Coca for Cocoa

Chocaguán Amazónico, a small peasant-run alternative crop company that emerged in the midst of Colombia's cocaine boom and civil war, will celebrate its 15th birthday in September.

POLITICS-INDIA: Woman Bags Speaker’s Job

India’s list of top women politicians grew Wednesday after the country’s Parliament elected Meira Kumar as the speaker of its powerful lower house.