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…

Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, directs the Copenhagen Consensus Center, ranking the smartest solutions to the world’s biggest problems by cost-benefit.

Worker on a farm in Felicity, Chaguanas, Trinidad, harvesting sweet potatoes. Climate change has brought drastic changes in the weather of this twin-island Caribbean nation. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

COPENHAGEN, Feb 13 2015 (IPS) – Right now, the United Nations is negotiating one of the world’s potentially most powerful policy documents. It can influence trillions of dollars, pull hundreds of millions out of poverty and hunger, reduce violence and improve education �…

A conservationist known as ‘The Water Man of India’ has been named Stockholm Water Prize Laureate for 2015.

Rajendra Singh, from the state of Rajasthan, has been a leading voice for water security, management and conservation in India for decades.

Singh is currently Chairman of environmental advocacy group Tarun Bharat Sangh, which helps local communities in India take back control of their natural resources, as well as pushing for sustainable development.

“Through the Indian wisdom of rainwater harvesting, we have made helpless, abandoned, destitute and impoverished villages prosperous and healthy again,” Singh said.

Torgny Holmgren, Executive Director of the Stockholm International Water Institute, called Singh “a beacon of hope,” warning …

A grandmother with her daughter – a young mother – and other members of their family in Mbya Guaraní Iboty Ocara, an indigenous village in the province of Misiones in the northwest of Argentina. Indigenous people are among the most vulnerable groups in Latin America in terms of maternal mortality. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

BUENOS AIRES, May…

Two health care workers clean their feet in a bucket of water containing bleach after they leave an Ebola isolation facility during an Ebola simulation at Biankouma Hospital in Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 2015 (IPS) – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, addressing delegates in a run-up to an international Ebola recovery conference, said last month that “all of the investments, all of the sacrifices and all of th…