AFGHANISTAN: Catch ’em Young, for Prostitution

Soma was a teenager in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif when her grandfather arranged her marriage to a husband she had never met.

SOMALIA: Rebuilding Among the Rubble

With vehicles and donkey carts packed with their belongings, Somalis are returning, four years after they fled, to their partially standing, bullet-scarred and mortar-shelled neighbourhoods in former Al-Shabaab controlled areas of Mogadishu.

The Oil That Comes in from the Cold

Thanks to soaring oil prices and new technology, oil producers in the hot sands of Arabia, the torrid Niger delta or the humid plains of the Orinoco are facing new competition from rivals in the frozen North.

CAMEROON: The Taps Have Run Dry

Mama Rosalie of Damas quarter in the capital of Cameroon trudges down a narrow, winding footpath, headed for a narrow stream running far below, a 20-litre water container in her right hand.

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Tribal People on the Warpath

This small town, barely 150 km away from the bustling eastern metropolis of Kolkata, hit news headlines in December 2008 when adivasis (indigenous people) led by Maoist rebels briefly captured it.

The Unsustainable Political Deficiencies of Environmentalism

The environmental movement won the ideological battle with the growth of awareness on climate change. Environmentalists are no longer seen as "loonies" or granola-eating hippies: the people seen as on the fringe" now are the climate sceptics who deny that global warming is caused by human activity.

DEVELOPMENT: When a Quick Fix Gets the Deep Six

Figuring out how to change the world for the better is a daunting challenge, but throngs of passionate people are willing to take on the task.

PERU: No Time Left to Adapt to Melting Glaciers

The water supplied by the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca, vital to a huge region of northwest Peru, is decreasing 20 years sooner than expected, according to a new study.

PERU: Weak Environmental Impact Studies for Mines

The stiff local opposition to the Conga gold mining project in the northern Peruvian highlands region of Cajamarca revived a long-postponed debate in this country, on the weakness of environmental impact studies in the mining industry.

SOMALIA: Taking Schools Back From Militants

Schools are beginning to re-open slowly in areas of capital Mogadishu that were until recently controlled by the militant Islamic group al-Shabaab. But an estimated 80 percent of students have not yet returned.

BRAZIL: Providing Alternatives for Small-Scale Tobacco Farmers

The fall in world tobacco consumption, especially in industrialised nations, is a sign of the urgent need for producer countries like Brazil, China, India and the United States to offer their farmers alternatives to growing tobacco.

VENEZUELA: Putting (Mothers’) Faces to the Violence

These women are not fashion models, nor are they advertising any product, yet their images look down on passersby from giant black-and-white posters in the Venezuelan capital. There are 52 of them, and they are all mothers who have lost one or more children to the criminal violence that is plaguing the country.

SIERRA LEONE: The Isolation of Epilepsy Sufferers

Elizabeth Zainab Kargbo was a successful young woman, eight months pregnant and working in Sierra Leone’s civil service, when she had her first seizure.

New Rules Leave Canadian Aid Groups in Limbo

Many Canadian civil society organisations working in international development are still awaiting a definitive answer about future government funding, a months-long lag critics argue has hampered overseas operations and only worsens Canada's global reputation when viewed in light of other issues in recent years.

ECONOMY-CUBA: Latest Reform: Bank Loans

Rules allowing Cubans to buy and sell cars and homes, and now, to take out loans, are two of the latest steps taken to "modernise" the economy.

Moving Towards a Food-Secure Ghana

In Dundo village in Nyankpala district, Northern Ghana, 10 women are busy weeding a rice field on a piece of land donated to them by the village chief.

AGRICULTURE-BOLIVIA: Adapting to the Floods

Margarita Amabeja holds out her hands full of golden rice grains and rough brown manioc roots - the first results of a strategy to adjust the agricultural cycles to the seasonal floods and droughts in the vast plains of Beni, in northeastern Bolivia.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Waiting for the “Heavens to Weep”

Duduzile Sibanda takes a break from preparing her long stretch of land for her maize crop in rural Mberengwa, in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province. She wipes her brow under the scorching sun and looks upwards. The sparse clouds are a cause of concern as she studies the sky and wonders aloud when the "heavens will weep."

BRAZIL: Amazon Turtles – Illegal Protein for the Poor, Delicacy for the Rich

"Many people lie" about the common practice of poaching turtles to eat or sell, said a man renowned for his fishing skills who lives on the banks of the Xingu river in Brazil's eastern Amazon jungle region.

KENYA: A Shelter for Safe Delivery

The Garissa Maternal Shelter in North Eastern Province, Kenya is the only such facility in an area with the country’s highest maternal mortality rate. At 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births, it is almost double the country’s average.

MALAWI: Women’s Education the Path to the Presidency

On an elegant veranda adorned with a red carpet, Malawi's Vice President Joyce Banda recalls how her childhood friend Chrissie Mtokoma was always top of their class and how she struggled to beat her. But now decades later Banda is a likely contender for the country's presidency in 2014, while Mtokoma lives in poverty.