Barbara Litzlbeck
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 14 2005 (IPS) – Each year, more than 50 million children go unregistered at birth, depriving them of basic services like health care and education, and making them more vulnerable to exploitation later in life.
In its annual report, The State of the World s Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible , released Wednesday, the U.N. children s agency UNICEF estimates that 55 percent of all births in the developing world, excluding China, are not formally registered.
Lack of access is among the most common reasons for parents not to register their child.
Birth registration needs to be simple, inexpensive and close to home. When this is not the case, the family may have to travel long distances to reach government offices which han…
Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Jul 24 2006 (IPS) – Everything about the Alberta oil sands development is impossibly big. Monster-sized trucks and giant excavators are carving up hundreds of square kilometres of land, thousands of kilometres of pipelines and roads have been laid, and millions of litres of water are being super-heated to process millions of tonnes of rock and sand.
Producing oil from oil sands also uses impossibly large amounts of energy.
The mining-extraction process requires about 750 cubic feet of natural gas for every barrel of bitumen, according to the non-governmental Pembina Institute report Oil Sands Fever . The in situ process that pumps super-hot steam 1,000 metres underground requires 1,500 cubic feet of natural gas to produce a single barre…
Ruth Ansah Ayisi
MAPUTO, Jul 30 2007 (IPS) – Over 1,000 Mozambicans, including children, are trafficked to South Africa every year where they are forced into prostitution or to provide free or cheap labour. In response, Mozambique s government last week approved a new law which will make human trafficking a crime punishable with long prison sentences.
It will probably be cold comfort to Sonia to know that Mozambique s council of ministers approved a law against human trafficking last week. She was rescued just over a year ago after having been trafficked to South Africa to provide domestic work free of charge.
After her return, she did not want to talk to her family about her experience. She only wanted to move away to another part of town, to be alone with her twin b…
David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Aug 28 2007 (IPS) – The European Union s top trade official has called on Thailand to revise its efforts to provide cheap medicines to people with AIDS over concerns that the country could be undermining global rules on intellectual property.
Since last year, Thailand has issued compulsory licenses on several patented medicines to ensure that they are made available at more affordable prices than they would otherwise be.
Although the Bangkok government insists that it is entitled to take such steps under rules set by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), its actions have been criticised by Peter Mandelson, the European commissioner for trade.
In a letter, seen by IPS, Mandelson expressed concern that Bangkok may be taking a new approach to…
Youth in Rwanda fill out the MY World survey. Credit: Mark Darrough/Girl Hub Rwanda
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2013 (IPS) – Kanny Daylop, a legal practitioner and consultant from Nigeria, recalls her encounter with a woman named Joy.
“She was young, probably a teenager,” Daylop said.”It is a useful guide for us but the conversation has to be far more holistic and far more real.” — NFI’s Amitabh Behar
Contrary to her name, Joy’s life was filled with hardship. She became pregnant and dropped out of school. Her parents threw her out of their house. Since then, she has been working as a seamstress to earn money to take care of herself and her unborn child.…
Florencio de Souza Bezerra points with his foot to a mound of dangerously inflammable charcoal dust on a roadside in Piquiá de Baixo. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
PIQUIÁ DE BAIXO, Brazil, Feb 10 2014 (IPS) – “My nephew was eight years old when he stepped in the ‘munha’ [charcoal dust] and burned his legs up to the knees,” said Angelita Alves de Oliveira from a corner of Brazil’s Amazonia that has become a deadly hazard for local people.
Treatment in faraway hospitals did not save the boy’s life, because “his blood had become toxic, the doctor said,” said Oliveira, 61, who has been working as a teacher for the last 30 years. “My sister was never the same…
Juvenile desert locust hoppers. Photo: FAO/G.Tortoli
CAIRO, Apr 13 2016 (IPS) – Now that Yemenis begin to hope that their year-long armed conflict may come to an end as a result of the Gulf Cooperation …
Joint Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) research documented the impact of the COVID-20 pandemic on women and girls. The research also found promising practices emerged during the pandemic. Credit: UNFPA
Tokyo, Mar 31 2022 (IPS) – Women and girls in the Asia-Pacific region were adversely impacted due to COVID-19 pandemic responses – with marginalized women and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) and gender-based violence (GBV) services profoundly affected.
These were the findings of a study by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the United Nations Populati…