Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director. Credit: UN Photo/Devra Berkowitz.
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 1 2016 (IPS) – The drugging, abduction and violent gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil calls us all to turn the tide of sexual violence against women and girls in Brazil and in every country in the world.
Her silence was broken by the men who boastfully posted their images of the rape, deepening her abuse by showing her body to the world, in the confident expectation of approval by their peers and impunity from pun…
A child carries a box of relief supplies to her tent at the Mardan refugee camp in Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 29 2016 (IPS) – Millions of children still die before reaching their fifth birthday every year, according to the 2016 State of The World’s Children Report released here Tuesday by the UN Children s Fund (UNICEF).
The , which is released annually, shows that a country’s income does not always determine progress in child mortality. Many poorer countries are outpacing their richer neighbours in reducing their mortality rates, and some rapidly growing economies – including India and Nigeria – have be…
Martin Khor is Executive Director of the South Centre, a think tank for developing countries, based in Geneva.
Dark pollution clouds over Cairo. Credit: Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani/IPS.
PENANG, Nov 11 2016 (IPS) – New research is showing that air pollution is a powerful if silent killer, causing 6.5 million worldwide deaths as well as being the major cause of climate change.
Air pollution has emerged as a leading cause of deaths and serious ailments in the world. Emissions that cause air pollution and are Greenhouse Gases are also the main factor causing climate change.
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Jomo Kwame Sundaram is a former economics professor who served as a senior UN official during 2005-2015. Tan Zhai Gen is an University of Oxford biochemistry graduate currently involved in research. Both are Malaysians.
Health problems stemming from carbohydrates, especially sugar over-consumption are correlated to growing overweight, obesity and non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, throughout the world. Credit: IPS
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Mar 22 2017 (IPS) – In 2015, after revelations that the company had funded researchers to present academic papers recommending exercise to address obesity and ill health, while marginalizing the role of dietary consumpt…
Amina J. Mohammed is UN Deputy Secretary-General who addressed the General Assembly’s Annual AIDS Review meeting.
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 2 2017 (IPS) – During the process of developing the Sustainable Development Goals it was clear to me how relevant and innovative the approach to ending AIDS had been and how important it would continue to be.
Amina J. Mohammed
Achieving our aims on AIDS is interlinked and embedded within the broader 2030 Agenda. Both are grounded in equity, human rights and a promise to leave no one behind.
In June 2016, Member States adopted the Political Declaration on Ending AIDS. As the Secretary-General’s report notes, the …
Veena S. Kulkarni is Associate Professor, Department of Criminology, Sociology, & Geography, Arkansas State University, US; Vani S. Kulkarni is Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, US; and Raghav Gaiha is (Hon.) Professorial Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, England.
Disability is neither purely medical nor purely social. Rather, it is an outcome of their interplay.
NEW DELHI, Jul 31 2017 (IPS) – The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (or RPD Act) is laudable in its intent and procedural detail, but mostly silent on disabilities among the elderly. Indeed, for this reason alone,…
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 2017 (IPS) – The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis and the international community must step in before it worsens, humanitarian agencies warn.
The escalation of ethnic clashes in southeastern DRC in recent months has left millions displaced and on the verge of starvation.
In the past year alone, the conflict has displaced nearly 2 million, 850,000 of whom are children and some of whom have fled to the neighboring nations of Angola and Zambia. DRC already had the highest number of new displacements in the world in 2016.
Last month, the UN declared the DRC a level three humanitarian emergency�…
Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami.
MIAMI, Feb 20 2018 (IPS) – It is the country of paradox, based on the double column of creativity and tradition. Americans are unable to escape the twin submission to the adamnism of being the first and the last to accept that the rest of the planet can be more original and may outrank them in any field.
Expelled, transferred, fled from Europe, they refuse to admit that the reconstructed European civilization, which they have neglected since 1776, can be superior to them. Sometimes, as Trump came up with, they would willingly admit Norwegians, especially if this option would prevent the arrival of citizens from the shithole dumps of the galaxy. It is a useless alter…
Dr Abhay Bang (MD, MPH, D. Sc (Hon), D. Lit (Hon.) is a physician, an internationally recognised public health expert, and the founder director of SEARCH
Photo courtesy: Rachita Vora
May 16 2018 (IPS) – Looking back at some 30 years of working in the social sector, I believe that the most important milestone in my journey was the point when I started recognising the importance of research in development.
As a freshly minted doctor in the late 1970s, I was so socially oriented that I did not take research seriously. When [Dr Rani Bang] and I started working in the villages of Wardha district, in 1977, we had a lot of beautiful, i…
Indigenous men and women of Nuñoa in Puno, Peru, spin and weave garments based on the fiber of the alpacas. Credit: SGP-GEF-UNDP Peru/Enrique Castro-Mendívil
GENEVA/NEW YORK, Aug 8 2018 (IPS) – States around the world must take effective action to guarantee the human rights of indigenous peoples, says a group of UN experts. In a joint statement marking International day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the experts say it is crucial that the rights of indigenous peoples are realised when they migrate or are displaced from their lands:
“In many parts of the world, indigenous peoples have become migrants because they are fleeing economic deprivation, forced…