Q&A: ‘New Donors Can Help Farming Sector’

Rising food prices, natural disasters and an energy crisis that is turning wheat into ethanol instead of bread have raised the spectre of inadequate global food supply that hits the poor. This grim reality has finally turned the spotlight on agricultural aid and its link to development effectiveness.

South-South Ties Reshape Aid Paradigm

When the G-8 countries, comprising the world’s largest industrialised nations, decided that improving Internet access to developing countries should be a priority, scores of leaders from developing world opposed the move.

MALAWI: Changing Climate Compounds Environmental Degradation

As Daniel Chakunkha and Mussa Abu talk on the side of a dirt path in Makunje village, Malawi, a steady stream of bicycles loaded with charcoal passes by. The men stand at the halfway mark between Mwanza, a small city in the country’s southwest, and Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial hub.

New Deal for Donors and Recipients at Busan?

The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), starting in this port city on Tuesday, will examine why international donor assistance worth trillions of dollars spent over decades has failed to eradicate poverty.

The Aid From Women No One Counts

Gender responsive budgeting becomes important when seen in the background of unpaid but important care work done by women, say delegates to an international meet on aid effectiveness in this South Korean city.

Mobilising Men to End Violence Against Women

Since it launched in 1997, the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women has distributed more than 78 million dollars to 339 projects around the world, but even these resources fall far short, meeting less than five percent of demand.

Q&A: Climate Talks Must Ensure That “Words Become Reality”

Involving women in decision-making and resource management is a basic necessity for any effective plan to address the multi- layered and life-threatening consequences of climate change, says the head of UN Women.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Cuba Joins New South-South Alliances

Cuba will be attending the next round of climate change negotiations after a year that has seen a growing consensus in the developing South to put pressure on rich nations to take on firmer commitments within an international governance regime for climate stability.

KENYA: Like a Fish Belongs to Water, the Ogiek Belong to the Mau Forest

The resettlement of evictees from Kenya’s Mau Forest remains a humanitarian and environmental concern for the country as more than 25,000 people continue to live in camps around the forest.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Making a Hot Cup of Rooibos Tea Unaffordable

South Africa’s Rooibos tea has become a popular drink all around the globe. But prices of the herbal brew could shoot up within the next decade, as the Rooibos plant can only grow in one small region in the world – which is severely affected by climate change.

Aid Not Effectively Reaching Africa’s Poor

Kenyan tea and coffee farmers remain disgruntled about the minimal profits they make selling their cash crops, the country’s leading foreign currency earners, as the government receives millions in funding for training and subsidies that most of these farmers are yet to see materialise.

GHANA: Tropical Ulcer Persists Despite Affordable Solutions

For the past 10 years, Buruli ulcer has been eating Benjamin Essel’s leg. The skin above his ankle is totally gone, and a swollen, pulpy and reddish wound rises almost up to his knee and wraps around his calf. Even still, this is an improvement over recent years.

LATIN AMERICA: How to Prevent ‘Femicide’

Vanina Alderete, an 18-year-old from Argentina, is a survivor of a particularly heinous case of domestic violence: when she was 11, her father killed her mother and her two little brothers and left her seriously injured.

Drastic Child Poverty Might Destroy Lesotho’s Future

Flagging economic fortunes and a persistent AIDS pandemic have devastated Lesotho, leaving little hope it will ever be able to pull itself out of its bleak poverty trap. Three out of five of the tiny southern African kingdom’s children are living in dismal poverty. Every fourth child is orphaned.

Q&A: Busan Beckons With New Promise

For a start, stop calling it "aid", Brian Atwood, chair of the Development Assistance Committee at the OECD, tells IPS.

Bangladesh Demands Climate Justice

Mosammet Monwara walks more than three km every alternate day to fetch water for her family of five in a heavy earthen pitcher.

NIGERIA: A Deadly Case of Mistaken Identity

The worst day of Olaniyi Emiola’s life was Mar. 17, 1998. At least it was for Olaniyi Emiola, 22, the spare motor parts trader. For Olaniyi Emiola, the armed robber, it was a lucky escape as another man with the same name had been wrongly sentenced to death for a crime he committed.

SOUTH AFRICA: Acid Mine Drainage Water Can Be Put to Use

Toxic water from derelict gold and uranium mines has reportedly destroyed Elize Strydom's dream to be a farmer in her retirement.

Activists Tie Occupy Movement to Global Gender Rights

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Nov. 25, a group of feminist organisations will unite to launch a campaign calling for an end of the "immoral and unethical economy of Wall Street" against women and people of colour.

SOUTH AMERICA: Coming Together to Preserve the La Plata Basin

Five South American countries have launched a joint sustainable management programme for the Río de la Plata basin, to preserve one of the largest fresh water reserves in the world.

UGANDA: Single Mothers Left Behind in Flooded Swampland

Life in Bwaise – a slum on the outskirts of the capital of Uganda – has never been easy. But increasingly erratic rains over the last three years have brought constant floods to the former swampland. Residents who can afford to are moving out, leaving the poorest – often single mothers and grandmothers – behind.