Q&A: Teens Wrongly Excluded From Family Planning

Nafissatou Diop has worked for decades on issues of reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and development in West Africa, including designing and implementing many studies and programmes.

POPULATION: Poorest Countries to Bear Brunt of Growth

The world's population - already at least 6.7 billion people - will double in the next 40 years if current growth rates are left unchecked, warns the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

HEALTH: Gender Finally Moving to Forefront of AIDS Fight

With women now comprising 61 percent of all people infected with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa, international donors, governments and advocacy organisations are looking more closely at the connections between HIV/AIDS and gender inequality.

RIGHTS-SOUTH KOREA: Prostitution Thrives with U.S. Military Presence

With the presence of U.S. soldiers, flesh trade is flourishing near the Camp Stanley Camptown close to Seoul.

RIGHTS-INDIA: India's Historic Gay Ruling

A day after the Delhi High Court's landmark judgment to overturn a colonial law that criminalised homosexuality, Indians expressed mixed reactions to the verdict.

AFRICA: Maternal Mortality, A Human Rights Catastrophe

The right to the highest attainable standard of health: not the most fashionable of human rights, but the limits on people's enjoyment of their right to health often coincide with continuing inequalities behind claims of economic growth or political reform.

HEALTH-SENEGAL: Fistula Sufferers Left To Their Fate

In Senegal's southern region, 58 percent of deliveries take place at home without any medical assistance, according to state reproductive health officials in Kolda, a town 425 km from the capital, Dakar. Women in the region suffer from exceptionally high rates of fistula.

RIGHTS: Queer Parade Defies Anachronistic Indian Law

"Not all females are women," reads a poster emblazoned in red. "I am the pink sheep of my family!" is the message on another, while a third, very cheekily proclaims, "I don’t give a f***, I am a greedy bisexual"!

NEPAL: Third Gender Assert Rights

Two years ago, 23-year-old Bhakti Shah, a cadet in the Nepal Army, was dismissed because she was seen to spend most of her free time with a fellow female cadet.

HUMAN RIGHTS-SLOVAKIA: Barriers Go Up For Abortion

Rights groups in Slovakia have attacked new abortion legislation they say not only breaches women's rights to privacy and regulations on medical confidentiality but could force some women into undergoing risky, illegal abortions.

HEALTH-KENYA: Family Planning Not Only For Women

In a makeshift room inside an unfinished building in the Manyatta slums in the Western Kenyan city of Kisumu, the neighbourhood’s men regularly congregate to discuss community matters, usually in the presence of the area chief.

RIGHTS: Sexual Violence in War Hauled Out of the Shadows

On Jun. 19, 2008, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1820, expressly addressing the problems of sexual violence in conflict situations. One year later, three experts in the field gathered to speak at the United States Institute of Peace to evaluate the implementation of 1820 and consider how it might better prevent this widespread crime.

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.

JAMAICA: For an Abortion Law That Reaches the Poor

When a Jamaican women’s group Sistren realised the voices of poor women were missing in a national debate on abortion rights, they boldly staged a play before parliamentarians reviewing a draft law that seeks to clarify when abortion can be deemed legal.

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.

LATIN AMERICA: “Sexuality Is an Essential Part of Humanity”

In an effort to promote the free enjoyment of human sexuality, separate from reproduction, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) launched the world's first declaration of sexual rights in the Argentine capital on Wednesday.

RIGHTS-UGANDA: ‘When a Man Hurts a Woman, There’s Nothing She Can Do’

Mary Atimango left the war-ravaged Gulu district to come and live in Kampala during the peak of the northern Ugandan conflict over fifteen years ago. The 59-year-old now lives in the small peri-urban village of ‘Acholi Quarters’ on Kireka Hill, on the outskirts of the Ugandan capital.

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.

EGYPT: ‘They Ogle, Touch, Use the Filthiest Language Imaginable’

As night falls over Egypt’s capital, youth gather along the banks of the Nile where a carnivalesque atmosphere prevails.

HEALTH-NEPAL: Baby Boom in Maoist Army

At the annual military parade of the People’s Liberation Army, Nepal’s ex-guerrillas, curious bystanders saw a young woman clad in military fatigues kiss and cuddle a baby before handing her back to an older woman.

HEALTH-INDIA: On the Rag Amidst Riches

For millions of Indian women the colloquial phrase 'going on the rag' can literally mean that, or using just about anything available to stay dry during menstrual periods for lack of access to modern sanitary pads.