A young teenage mother, pregnant again, sits with her young child in the Sawré Muybu indigenous village in the Amazonian state of Pará in northern Brazil. Teenage pregnancy is one of the common problems facing Latin America. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 30 2019 (IPS) – The crusade against comprehensive sex education by conservative and religious sectors undermines progress in Latin America and could further …
Ambassador Monica Juma is the Cabinet Secretary (Minister), of Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A mother and her infant in Kenya. Credit: @UNFPAKenya
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 24 2019 (IPS) – In 1994 the International Conference and Population and Development (ICPD) was hosted in Cairo by the Government of Egypt. Twenty-five years later, Kenya is ready to convene the ICPD “Nairobi Summit” in November 2019.
The Programme of Action endorsed and adopted at the historic Conference in Cairo has had a tremendous effect in transforming the lives of women and girls in developing countries. A quarter century later, the international community will again converge, th…
Do women suffer a great loss of employment compared to men after a major health shock such as a serious illness or a disability or both? Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
ROME and MASSACHUSETTS, Sep 19 2019 (IPS) – In a life peppered with tragedy, Mary Shelley wrote in 1818, “Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery?” That this accurately sums up the fate of many women in South Asia who suffer a major health shock such as a serious illness or a disability or both, is hard to dispute.
Farhana Haque Rahman
The rising burden of …
A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 2019 (IPS) – Ending the practice of defecating in the open, rather than in a toilet, will have “transformational benefits” for some of the world’s most vulnerable people, says the UN’s partner sanitation body, the WSSCC (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council).
Ahead …
HarvestPlus*
HARARE, Zimbabwe, Jan 27 2020 (IPS) – Steven Seremwe, who is 57 years old, was retrenched from his job as an administrator at Lake Shore Missions in 2012. He decided to focus on farming, and he started growing various crops—white maize, sugar beans, and sweet potatoes, among others—for consumption and sale.
“I have always loved agriculture but because of work pressures, I was not practicing. But when I got retrenched from work, I decided to follow my heart and started farming,” he said.
The problem was that every farming season, even with a bumper harvest, Seremwe`s income was falling short. Profits were never enough to feed and care fo…
Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor is a medical doctor, the CEO of EpiAFRIC, Director of Policy and Advocacy for Nigeria Health Watch
ABUJA, Mar 20 2020 (IPS) – Coronavirus is now a pandemic and the World Health Organization considers Europe as its new epicenter. Italy, Spain and France are and several nations are banning travelers from countries where cases are on the rise.
But …
Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Director, Division on International Trade and Commodities, UN Conference on Trade & Development (UNCTAD)
An undersea restaurant in the Maldives, a Small Island Developing State (SIDS)
GENEVA, May 4 2020 (IPS) – The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures put in place to contain its diffusion are taking a heavy toll on the tourism sector. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the COVID-19 pan…
Jo Becker is the children’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch
Children eating lunch in the João Baptista Cáffaro School cafetería. Itaboraí, Brazil, 45 km from Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
NEW YORK, Apr 24 2020 (IPS) – Children may escape the worst symptoms of Covid-19 and suffer lower mortality rates, but for millions, the pandemic will have devastating effects.
The choices that governments make now are crucial for children. Governments can both lessen the worst effects of the crisis on children in the months to come, and also put policies in place that will improve children’s lives long after the pandemic is over.
School shutdown…
A woman wearing a mask to protect herself from the contagion of the coronavirus, waits to buy food outside a store in the Playa municipality, in Havana, Cuba. As of Tuesday, Jun. 16, 1.7 million people have been affected by the virus across Latin America and the Caribbean — doubling in the last week. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS
Longer term investments are needed to enable the over 500 million small holder farmers in developing countries to grow more food, thus increasing their incomes and resilience. Credit: Miriam Gahtigah/IPS
ILLINOIS, United States, Jul 16 2020 (IPS) – African countries are , and this is finally enabling many citizens to resume their normal life. However, there is still an urgent need for African countries to prioritize agriculture to tackle food insecurity issues that have been exacerbated by COVID and wil…