OUAGADOUGOU, Aug 31 2012 (IPS) – For far too many households in Burkina Faso, going to the toilet means heading for the bush. The Burkinabè government has launched a new campaign to change this, calling on prominent personalities as both sponsors and champions.
It s an initiative based on solidarity between individuals and communities in order to speed up construction of latrines and put an end to defecation in the open air – which is a widespread practice more or less everywhere in the country – and to reduce diseases linked to poor hygiene, explained Halidou Koanda, who works for the non-governmental organisation WaterAid.
In 2011, and the Burkinabè Ministry for Water and Agriculture carried out a survey of the home villages of 70 notable people from all walks …
People lining up for food has become a common sight in many major U.S. cities. Credit: Jeffrey Beall/cc by 2.0
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2012 (IPS) – Against the backdrop of a spreading global economic crisis, exacerbated by changing climate patterns, the global aim of guaranteeing food security for all by 2015 appears to be far from being achieved.
As delegates and activists are addressing the lingering issues of world hunger, malnutrition and poverty on the occasion of World Food Day Tuesday, homelessness and hunger are spreading fast and affecting millions of people across the globe, with far reaching implications in the United States.
In the world s wealthiest nat…
View outside a U.N.-supported family clinic in Khovd aimag, Mongolia, providing immunisation and child care. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 14 2012 (IPS) – Since the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the United Nations has consistently maintained that family planning is a basic human right to be exercised by all not just the wealthy and otherwise privileged.
The right of individuals to decide on the number of children they bear has been enshrined in at least seven other key treaties and U.N. declarations: the proclamation of the international human rights conference in 1968, the 1969 General Assembly r…
A youth smokes diamba (marijuana) at a gang base in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/IPS
FREETOWN, Jan 9 2013 (IPS) – The air is heavy with the smell of marijuana as Gibrilla (23) expertly rolls a large joint at the Members of Blood (M.O.B) gang base in a poor neighbourhood of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.
He is part of a generation of young people faced with a chronic shortage of jobs, many of whom have turned to routine drug use as a way to pass the time and deal with the stresses of life in what is still one of the poorest countries in the world.
“Most of the young guys smoke diamba (marijuana) here,” says Gibrilla, gesturing to…
A young mother attends a training session on how to prepare ready-to-use therapeutic food with local and affordable ingredients. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
DHAKA, Mar 20 2013 (IPS) – When nine-month-old Borsha was admitted to the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh last January, she was on the verge of death.
Suffering from a condition called severe acute malnutrition (SAM), which too many people in this South Asian country of 150 million are familiar with, Borsha was dangerously underweight.
Her 26-year-old mother, who had traveled 30 kilometres from her…
Shaheen Begum receives skills training at the PPC paraplegic centre in Hayatabad in northern Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
PESHAWAR, May 13 2013 (IPS) – Gul Shada thought it was the end of the road for her when she and her husband met with a road accident last year in the Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Not only did the mishap leave Shada widowed at the relatively young age of 37, she also sustained an injury to her back that immobilised her.
It was then that she came to the country’s sole paraplegic centre (PPC) at Hayatabad, to the southwest of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. And it was here…
Medical services are increasingly difficult to provide in Syria. Above, a field hospital. Credit: FreedomHouse/CC by 2.0
DAMASCUS, Jun 5 2013 (IPS) – It was nine in the morning when the shell landed in front of nine-year-old Hella al-Abtah s house in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Hella survived the initial blast but was critically wounded in the head, and her father rushed her to the Palestine Hospital, blood pouring from the laceration.
Doctors at the hospital managed to stabilise Hella, but the relief was short-lived. Because of a chronic shortage of critical medical supplies and frequent power cuts, they could not complete even routine pr…
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…