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 …
is the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya.
Right to health as enshrined in the Constitution of Kenya 2010 and; contribution to economic development as envisioned in Vision 2030. Credit: JACARANDA HEALTH
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 19 2017 (IPS) – Every year, one million Kenyans are by healthcare-related expenditures. Poverty predisposes them to disease and slows all aspects of growth in the economy.
Poor health hobbles economic growth. Noble Laureate in Economics Robert Fogel noted in 1993 that better diets, clothing, housing and quality healthcare all play an important role in generat…
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…
In this special series of reports, IPS journalists travel to the border region between Bangladesh and Myanmar to speak with Rohingya refugees, humanitarian workers and officials about the still-unfolding human rights and health crises facing this long-marginalized and persecuted community.
A group of Rohingya children emerge from a nearby religious school in Kutupalong camp. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Dec 5 2017 (IPS) – Mariam Akhtar, 23, is desperately searching for her young daughter two weeks after arriving from Myanmar in Cox’s Bazar, a …
Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.
First Lady of Kenya, Ms Margaret Kenyatta with President Uhuru Kenyatta at the State House in Nairobi Kenya, during the launch of the Second Strategic Framework to improve maternal & child health on 08 March 2018. Credit: State House
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 12 2018 (IPS) – Mr. Maina Kiai’s account () of the exciting dialogue hosted at Stanford University, USA does not present a true account of what transpired at that meeting.
The former WFP Executive Director Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, students, professors, Silicon Valley professionals and civil society were present at this meeting.…
Pulses are good for nutrition and income, particularly for women farmers who look after household food security, like those shown here at a village outside Lusaka, Zambia. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
BRUSSELS, Jun 8 2018 (IPS) – Lawmakers at the highest levels urgently need a “revolution in thinking” to tackle the twin problem of sustainable food production and migration. Starting with an inaugural event in Brussels, then travelling on to New York and Milan, an international team o…
Manipadma Jena interviews the executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute TORGNY HOLMGREN
In south west coastal Satkhira, Bangladesh as salinity has spread to freshwater sources, a private water seller fills his 20-litre cans with public water supply to sell in islands where poor families spend 300 Bangladesh Taka every month to buy drinking and cooking water alone. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
STOCKHOLM, Sep 11 2018 (IPS) – Growing economies are thirsty economies. And water scarcity has become “the new normal” in many parts of the world, according to Torgny Holmgren executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
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 …