KENYA: Primary Education Under the Gun

The children are afraid. There are armed bandits hiding with stolen animals in the thickets behind Nawoyaregae Primary School in Kaputir Location.

NIGER: Livestock Herders Plan Ahead

The cows Djibo Hama looks after belong to someone else, but he is diligent. Anticipating a severe shortage of good grazing in 2010, he secured cattle feed for the 35 that remain.

DEVELOPMENT: Recovery Could Leave Behind World’s Poorest

The world's 49 least developed countries (LDCs), described as the poorest of the poor, could feel the effects of the global economic crisis for decades, a senior U.N. official warned this week.

SOUTH AFRICA: Men Battle Gender-based Violence

When Mbuyiselo Botha decided to take the African National Congress League President, Julius Malema, to court for hate speech against women, he was confident from the start that the case had merit. But he also knew that this would be the most challenging test of his 15 years of gender activism.

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Banking on Women

Rinki Kumari’s white laminate-topped desk at the Bank of India’s branch here in Sahdeokhap village in eastern Bihar state is easily the busiest, with men, women and even children crowding around her.

DEVELOPMENT: Mega-Inequality in Urban Mega-Regions

Basic services that are collapsing or non-existent, overcrowding, pollution: these are big-city problems that are compounded in developing countries by poverty and inequality.

URUGUAY: Improving Conditions for Waste Pickers

"The time will come when 80 percent of the raw material used by industry in Uruguay will be recycled waste products," Marcelo Conde, a 40-year-old garbage sorter who has been digging through trash for recyclables "for as long as I can remember," says with some pride.

FINANCE: IMF Proposes 100-Billion-Dollar Climate Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published the first details of a proposed financing framework, dubbed the 'Green Fund', intended to mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with the consequences of climate change and mitigate further emissions.

RIGHTS-UGANDA: Bearing the Pains of Double Discrimination

They endure stigma, discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but Ugandan women living with disabilities say the greatest challenge facing them centres on their reproductive health.

HAITI: Watching the Sky with Dread

With the spring rains and hurricane season just around the corner in Haiti, some 600,000 people are still living in camps, many in areas prone to flooding. And plans to provide solutions for the survivors of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake are moving forward slowly.

URUGUAY: Agro-Export Boom May Have Lethal Consequences

Behind the explosive growth of the agriculture and plantation forestry industries in Uruguay lies clear proof of the indiscriminate use of chemical products that pose serious threats to the environment and human health.

DEVELOPMENT: Sanitation Goals Falter Amid Official Apathy

At the United Nations, "water and sanitation" have remained inseparable twins on the world body's social and economic agenda.

BRAZIL: Fewer Slum Dwellers Thanks to Upgrading

A United Nations report published ahead of the Fifth World Urban Forum in Brazil says the proportion of the population of this country living in "favelas" or shantytowns was reduced 16 percent between 2000 and 2010.

U.S.: Water Crisis High on Policy Agenda, Clinton Says

On a rainy morning here Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasised the centrality to U.S. foreign policy of addressing the world's water challenges.

DEVELOPMENT: Political Will the Missing Link for MDGs

Despite numerous factors that threaten the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 - a global financial crisis, a food crisis, climate change, natural disasters – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this week that his main concern is "political will".

WEST AFRICA: Stopping the Polio Virus

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and its partners hope to eliminate the circulation of the polio virus in West Africa as soon as June by launching the first round of national synchronised immunisation days against the debilitating disease.

HEALTH-US: Maternal Deaths on the Rise

Despite the fact that the United States spends more on maternal health than any other country in the world, deaths in childbirth among U.S. women are on the rise and already surpass the morbidity rates in most developed countries.

DEVELOPMENT: Bad Water More Deadly Than War

Bad water kills more people than wars or earthquakes, declares Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

Q&A: Tapping Women’s Enterprise to Topple Rural Poverty

Employees at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) may have cause to fear for their jobs after Yukiko Omura was appointed vice president of the United Nations' rural poverty agency in February.

POLITICS-RWANDA: Woman Vies for Top Job

On average women constitute 18.8 percent of representatives in parliaments across the world according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). This gender imbalance has been subject to much feminist criticism and many campaigns for change have been staged to address the status quo. The situation is however different in Rwanda.

EDUCATION-SIERRA LEONE: Government Ignores Demands for Additional Teachers

Ismail Conteh has been teaching for the past year-and-a-half at a primary school in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown – without receiving a single cent. He is one of hundreds of teachers recruited by schools to match the ever-growing number of pupils.