The United States is withdrawing all of its funding from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) after claiming without evidence that the agency supports coercive abortions in China. UNFPA, which does not provide support for abortions anywhere, says that U.S. funds actually helped it to prevent some 295,000 unsafe abortions in 2016 by supporting voluntary family planning. IPS takes a look at one of the other ways the UNFPA is working to reduce abortions, by addressing gender-biased sex selection.
Credit: Curt Carnemark / World Bank. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 7 2017 (IPS) – When Bimla Chandrasekharan saw that women who gave birth to baby girls were being …
New arrivals struggle to find space in the already-overcrowded Kutupalong camp, which saw over 16,000 new arrivals within a week of the outbreak of violence in Myanmar on 25 August 2017. Credit: UNHCR/Vivian Tan
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 9 2017 (IPS) – A dramatic increase in the number of refugees fleeing Myanmar is placing a huge strain on already very limited resources in Bangladesh, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said.
In the last two weeks alone, an estimated 270,000 Rohingya refugees had sought safety in Bangladesh amid escalating violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
“The situation is very grave,” said UNCHR Bangladesh’s spokesperson Joseph Tr…
Egyptian women protesters behind bars. Credit: VOA News
CAIRO, Egypt, Oct 27 2021 (IPS) – The fate of Egyptian women and girls delicately hangs in the balance as the country continues to have one of the worst records in the world for gender equality. With oppression often state-sanctioned, Egyptian women face a daily struggle against sexual harassment and other violations of their basic human rights, including .
Today, and , have come together with , and several prominent voices from the region and beyond, to demand that the Egyptian government takes immediate steps to fix this situation.
It needs to take clear action to enhance the rights of wome…
The cumulative needs of injured patients from the war have created a medical crisis. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 30 2023 (IPS) – There are about globally who cannot access surgery. In Ethiopia, for every 5,000 needed surgeries per 100,000 people, the country’s health system Yet, this is Africa’s second largest population, with over 120 million people.
The statistics are worrying. This is further exacerbated by a recently ended two-year war in the northern part of the country that devastated among others, the health sector. There is however an opportunity to build back better as the government institutes post-war reconstruction. This is possible th…