Uneven Results in Bid to Halt Needless Mother and Child Deaths

Political, private sector and civil society leaders from around the world gathered here on Tuesday to recommit to a year-old initiative, Every Woman Every Child, which aims to prevent 16 million maternal and child deaths by 2015.

DR CONGO: No Water, No Management, No Power

Frequent power cuts have led to the firing of the board of the Democratic Republic of Congo's national electricity company. But it is not clear if sub-par generation from the Inga hydroelectric power stations supplying the capital Kinshasa is due to poor management or to unusually low water levels in the Congo River.

CLIMATE CHANGE-BRAZIL: Farmers “Have Good Reason to Worry”

Bananas are harvested where apples used to grow; cassava, a traditional crop, is disappearing from the Northeast; and the southeast is losing the fragrance of good coffee. This is the science fiction of a new distribution of crops in Brazil, South America's agricultural powerhouse.

Adding Up the Cost of Education in Sierra Leone

A formal strike of teachers has been averted and pupils in Sierra Leone returned to school on Tuesday, almost a week after the term was meant to officially start.

Ship of State Needs More Women at the Helm

Less than 10 percent of the world's political leaders are female, according to United Nations figures, but many of them were present Monday at U.N. headquarters in New York, where they reiterated calls for increased participation for women as critical to both economic development and democracy.

Women Hung Out to Dry in Global Labour Market

Amid policy battles over food production, energy resources and economic decline, one untapped natural resource that is guaranteed to boost production on a global scale has been stubbornly overlooked – the power of women in the labour force.

DADAAB: A Daily Prayer for Complication-Free Births

Dr. Beldina Gikundi's daily prayer is that the handful of malnourished pregnant Somali women who go into labour that day at the Dadaab refugee complex do not have complications, which might require a caesarean section. Because Gikundi knows that Somali cultural beliefs mean that she and her staff at Hagadera Hospital will most likely not be able to immediately operate on the women and save their lives and those of their unborn children.

INDIA: ‘Missing Girls is About Femicide’

India has been ranked the fourth most dangerous country in the world for women, but the widespread practice of selectively aborting female foetuses may make it the most hostile to the female gender.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Women Challenge Monopoly on “Men’s Jobs”

From a small office inside a public school on the eastern side of the Rio Ozama in the capital Santo Domingo, a programme operated by a local NGO, Ce-Mujer, has been leading a quiet revolution to empower women in the workplace for the last 13 years.

World Bank, IMF Face Shifting Development Paradigm

Amid a global financial crisis that has shown little signs of reversing, next week's fall meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are crucial in setting the tone for rebounding world markets, to which leaders of the Bretton Woods institutions offered optimistic, yet ultimately vague, solutions in speeches this week.

SOUTH AMERICA: Uneven Progress in Child Health

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay have all made progress in the area of child health. But some are celebrating significant achievements while others are plodding slowly towards the goals adopted by the U.N. member countries in 2000.

SWAZILAND: No Fees No School

The future education of Swazi children remains uncertain, as public schools across the country have not reopened for the new term because government has not been able to pay for their upkeep.

Finding Opportunity in a World of Seven Billion

Next month, the world's population will reach seven billion people, a landmark that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is hailing in its drive to raise awareness about the need for global cooperation to solve issues of development.

Unleashing the Power of Women and Girls

Kakenya Ntaiya was engaged at age five and would have been married by 13 if her mother had not insisted that she attend her small village school in Enoosaen, Kenya.

BRAZIL: Beating Drought in Semiarid Northeast

Violent clashes looked inevitable when some 1,500 desperately hungry peasants poured into this small Brazilian town. Riot police were staked out to prevent looting. It was the year 1993, and millions of people in Brazil's impoverished semiarid Northeast had been forced to the brink of starvation by three years of drought.

DEVELOPMENT: When Poverty Goals Fail, What Next?

The United Nations is the only legitimate body to lead a post- 2015 action plan for development, according to civil society ambassadors from around the world.

COTE D’IVOIRE: Suspended Exports Dent Scrap Metal Dealers’ Prospects

Between now and 2012, the Côte d'Ivoire government plans to establish a scrap metal processing industry that will supply finished products to domestic and regional markets. It is unwelcome news for the country's existing scrap dealers.

INDIA: Kashmir Gets a Grip on AIDS

When the sole Community Care Centre in Jammu and Kashmir providing medical and psychosocial services to people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) closed down for lack of patients it was a sure sign that the north Indian state had beaten back dire forecasts.

Low-Cost Healthcare Goes High-Tech

Cell phones and computer applications can help save the lives of thousands of mothers and children worldwide.

Q&A: “Democracies Must Ensure Fair Gender Redistribution of Resources”

No matter how progressive laws to promote equality between men and women may be, without budgets with a gender perspective that allocate resources differentially, inequality will persist in Latin America.

SIERRA LEONE: Child Rights Exist Only on Paper

The six-year-old girl pulls her T-shirt up to show the dozens of pale lines across her back. They are fresh scars from the lashing she received from her caregiver after she lost 500 Leones, the equivalent of about 10 cents.