Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 1 2009 (IPS) – The spreading global financial crisis is threatening to undermine another one of the U.N. s major development and health goals: family planning.
United Nations officials are expressing fears that planned funding for reproductive health services may fall short of its target.
According to the latest figures released here, international donor assistance to population activities continued to increase over the years 7.4 billion dollars in 2006 rising to about 8.1 billion dollars in 2007.
The projected funding for 2008 and 2009 was estimated at about 11.1 and 11.2 billion dollars, respectively.
However, given the current global financial crisis, it is not certain whether donors will live up to their expected fu…
Bill Miller is the accredited Washington International journalist covering the U.N. and is the producer/moderator of Global Connections Television. The writer can be contacted at: [email protected]
Since Aug. 3, there has been a massive dislocation of some 200,000 people from Iraq, resulting in more than 1.2 million displaced. Credit: Mustafa Khayat/CC-BY-ND-2.0
NEW YORK, Sep 4 2014 (IPS) – The catastrophic events in Iraq that are unfolding daily are more significant than at any point in recent memory.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which is now calling itself the Islamic State (IS), steamrolled out of Syria into Iraq and appeared to…
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 2 2015 (IPS) – With 21 million Yemeni civilians caught in the grips of a conflict that has been escalating since March, the killing of two local aid workers Wednesday could worsen their misery, as a major humanitarian organisation considers the future of its operations in parts of the war-torn country.
Both victims were employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and had been traveling in the northern governorate of Amran, between the Saada province and Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, when a gunman reportedly opened fire on the convoy.
One worker died at the scene; his colleague was rushed to a nearby hospital, but succumbed to his injuries soon after.
In a released earlier today, Antoine Grand, head of the ICRC delegation …
Intravenous drug users in Pakistan. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 2017 (IPS) – Opioids are among the most devastating drugs and are creating a crisis of epidemic proportions, said the UN drug agency.
In its annual World Drug Report, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found concerning trends in drug use around the world.
In 2015, an estimated quarter of a billion people used drugs at least once. Of these, almost 30 million suffered from drug use disorders including dependence. UNODC found that opioids were the most ha…
Yasmine Sherif is Director, Education Cannot Wait
NEW YORK, Jul 20 2020 (IPS) – “We may all come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now,” Martin Luther King Jr once said. His timeless wisdom rings truer than ever today for the many challenges the world is facing. COVID-19, continued armed conflicts and forced displacement, climate-change induced disasters, deep divides and widespread discrimination mark the human family in the 21st century.
Yasmine Sherif
While COVID-19 is indeed a health crisis, the state of the world is in a bigger, multi-dimensional crisis. The one safe solution is education. Not just any education, but a quality education. One …
Agroecology can fight malnutrition, curb conflict AND build community self reliance and resilience–in hunger hotspots and beyond
BOSTON / NEW YORK, Jun 11 2021 (IPS) – Acute hunger is expected to soar in over 20 countries in the next few months, warns a recent on global “hunger hotspots” from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). An estimated 34 million people are “one step away from starvation”, pushed to the brink by climate shocks, conflict, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Daniel Moss
The food aid industry is likely to be very busy in the coming years, even as Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the…
Honorine Meda became pregnant herself at the age of nineteen. Now she helps raise awareness of teenage pregnancy among girls in Dissin.
DISSIN, Burkina Faso, Jul 28 2021 (IPS) – Honorine Meda is 23. Cycling through her hometown of Dissin, in Burkina Faso’s verdant southwest, she smiles, waves and stops to chat with one of the girls she counsels.
Thanks to a program by the German development agency (GIZ) and their Pro Enfant initiative, Honorine trained to counsel teenage girls in Dissin on how to avoid pregnancies.
She became pregnant herself, with her now three-year-old son, when she was 19. It was tough, she told IPS.
“I can say it was the hardest at th…