Sixteen-year-old Parul, hailing from Dhaka’s Batara slum, is paid about 15 dollars a month for her work in a garment factory. Also in the picture are her younger brothers and a cousin. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
GENEVA, Jul 13 2013 (IPS) – The decisions of the United States and the European Union to demand implementation of controversial labour standards in Bangladesh following the Sawa industrial tragedy pose a serious threat to the rule-based global trading system, says Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General for United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
“Labour rights and standards are something very sensitive to all developing and least developed countri…
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27 2013 (IPS) – When the United Nations commemorates the International Day Against Nuclear Tests later this week, the lingering question in the minds of most anti-nuclear activists is whether or not the existing moratorium on testing will continue to be honoured or occasionally violated with impunity.
John Loretz, programme director at International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, told IPS that since the 1990s the moratorium has been honoured by most states with nuclear weapons.
The exceptions, he pointed out, have been India and Pakistan, both of which tested nuclear weapons in 1998, but have not done so since then, and North Korea, which has conducted three very small tests since 2006.
When Pyongyang conducted its third test la…
A health worker explains the sexual transmission of infections at the family planning clinic in Yopougon. ARV shortages and long waits discourage women from starting or staying on treatment. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS
ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Nov 8 2013 (IPS) – At the Cocody-Anono community health centre, south-east of the Ivorian economic capital of Abidjan, Bertine Bahi* regularly attends awareness sessions on Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) for women living with HIV.
Bahi tested positive in her third month of pregnancy. In October, the 32-year-old was five months pregnant and still had not revealed her HIV status to her husband.
“Despi…
Zambian trader Dorothy Chisa sells caterpillars, a popular high-protein delicacy in the southern African country. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS
LUSAKA, Dec 17 2013 (IPS) – It is known as the land of copper to the outside world, but there’s another c-word that does a roaring trade in Zambia, albeit locally caterpillars.
On a street corner in the capital Lusaka on a scorching hot day, Dorothy Chisa, 49, is selling the insects, a popular high-protein delicacy in the southern African country. They come raw in different sized pots starting at five Zambian Kwacha (less than one dollar).”They come from other countries like Malawi, Zimbabwe, even South Africa to buy [the cat…
A man and his daughter return to Bor town, Jonglei state after the fierce fighting in the state and across the country largely ended in January. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS
JUBA, Feb 27 2014 (IPS) – Gatmai Deng lost three family members in the violence that erupted in South Sudan on Dec. 15 and lasted until the end of January. And he blames their deaths on the government’s failure to use the country’s vast oil revenues to create a better life for its almost 11 million people.
When the country gained independence from Sudan in 2011, many hoped that their new government would provide them with the services that successive Sudanese governments had denied the South Su…
Naz Bibi is awaiting treatment for fistula at the Koohi Goth Women’s Hospital in Pakistan. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS
KARACHI, Jun 17 2014 (IPS) – The word on the street was that if there were one place on earth that could treat Mohammad Lalu’s wife, it would be the Koohi Goth Women’s Hospital in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi.
The 50-year-old stone crusher hailing from the remote village of Dera Bugti in the southwest Balochistan province had spent 30 years searching for a facility that would treat his wife, Naz Bibi, who suffers from obstetric fistula.
Sitting upright on a plastic sheet draped over one of the hospital beds, Bibi told IPS, It took us t…
Doctors examine internally displaced children from North Waziristan Agency at a free medical clinic in Bannu, a district of Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jul 21 2014 (IPS) – Some fled on foot, others boarded trucks along with luggage, rations and cattle. Many were separated from families, or collapsed from exhaustion along the way. They don’t know where their next meal will come from, or how they will provide for their children.
In the vast refugee camps of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, civilians who fled the Pakistan Army’s military offensive against the Taliban in the country’s no…
Several Pacific Island states are struggling to provide their far-flung populations with access to fresh water. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
LOTOFAGA VILLAGE, Samoa, Sep 1 2014 (IPS) – Pacific Island states are surrounded by the largest ocean in the world, but inadequate fresh water sources, poor infrastructure and climate change are leaving some communities without enough water to meet basic needs.
Laisene Nafatali lives in Lotofaga village, home to 5,000 people on the south coast of Upolu, the main island of Samoa, a Polynesian island state located northeast of Fiji in the central South Pacific region.
Like many on the island, she is dependen…
German aircraft arrives in Ghana to help deliver U.N. supplies for emergency Ebola response. Credit: UN Photo/UNMEER
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 22 2014 (IPS) – The widespread outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, which has resulted in over 4,500 deaths so far, is also threatening to trigger a food crisis in the three countries already plagued by poverty and hunger.
Dr. Shenggen Fen, director-general of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), told IPS the crisis is expected to be confined mostly to the countries directly affected by the spreading disease: Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Asked whether the food shortages will also rea…
Men navigate with difficulty around an idea of masculinity that leads them to ignore their own health needs regarding HIV. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues/IPS
NAIROBI, Dec 12 2014 (IPS) – Mention gender inequality in AIDS and the fact that more women than men live with HIV pops up. But another, rarely spoken about gendered difference is proving lethal to men with HIV.
Research reveals that, across Africa, men have lower rates of HIV testing, enrollment on antiretroviral treatment, adherence, viral load suppression and survival, than women.Fast Facts
• In Zambia, 63 % of adults starting ART are women.
• In Uganda and Tanzania, women left HIV care 12% less…