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…
Stuart Minchin, is Director-General
Aug 24 2020 – Throughout my career, I have always championed the value of open data, especially geospatial and earth observation data for the social, environmental and economic growth that it brings. Access to timely and accurate data is critical to maximizing the efficiency of development programmes and is a critical economic as well as scientific imperative for our region.
When I took office as Director-General of the Pacific Community (SPC), one of the projects that immediately grabbed my attention was the Pacific Data Hub (PDH). The PDH is an ambitious catalyst for change in how we manage and extract value from o…
KJ Ong is an independent researcher on technology and the co-founder of Data Democrasea, an initiative that advocates for knowledge, justice, and equality at the frontier of tech in the developing world.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 15 2020 (IPS) – In the glitzy Dolby Theater in Hollywood Heights, with stars dressed in hundred thousand-dollar garbs, Parasite—a film about inequality, class tension and the fault lines of capitalism—won big. I couldn’t help but recall South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s earlier 2013 film, Snowpiercer.
KJ Ong
Starring a rugged Chris Evans, the positively demonic Tilda Swinton and Bong’s erstwhile collaborator Song Kang-Ho, the f…
Riccardo Petrella, an Italian national living in Belgium is Emeritus Professor, Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), with Honorary Degrees (Honoris Causa) from eight universities in Sweden, Denmark, France, Canada, Argentina and Belgium. His research and teaching fields have been regional development, poverty, science and technology policy and globalisation.
The UN General Assembly is holding a Special Session on the Covid-19 pandemic at the level of Heads of State and Government on 3 and 4 December.. It took more than a year of discussions to overcome the opposition of certain states, notably the United States and President Donald Trump.
A healthcare…