A demonstrator in Buenos Aires wears a T-shirt with the slogan “my body, my rights,” one of the slogans of the so-called green tide – the colour adopted by the movement for the legalisation of abortion, which is beginning to spread to other Latin American countries. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2019 (IPS) – Abortion has long been a contentious issue across the world, and the debate is only heating up, prompting women to stand up and speak out for their reproductive rights.

In response to increasingly restrictive policies, civil society is taking action to help protect abortion rights.

“The failure of states to guarantee…

The backlash against globalization can no longer be ignored

Inequality out in the open. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

GENEVA, Sep 23 2019 (IPS) – Increasing economic inequality is a defining challenge of our time. In recent years, it has triggered analysis and reflection by many scholars, politicians and others on its causes and consequences on economic growth and efficiency, politics and democracy, human rights, individual behaviors, access to health, social cohesion and environmental degradation. The perception that the top 1% of income earners are gaining at the expense of the other 99% has resulted in widespread public debates in many countries on the social and .…

Polio cases around have declined globally by more than 99 percent since 1988, but the type 1 poliovirus remains endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it has made a comeback this year and infected 102 people. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 20 2019 (IPS) – Efforts to wipe polio off the face of the planet took a step forward this week, with a multibillion-dollar fundraiser in the Middle East helping eradication schemes tackle a virus that disproportionately kills and cripples children in poor countries.

Donor governments and philanthropists pledged $2.6 billion on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi to immunise 450 million children against polio e…

Passengers wear face masks while riding the subway in Shenzhen, China. Credit: UN News/Jing Zhang.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 31 2020 (IPS) – The rise in new coronavirus cases outside China, now constitutes a global health emergency, the World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee declared on Thursday, calling on all countries to take urgent measures to contain the respiratory disease.

 state there a…

Credit: Mohamed Fofanah/IPS

NEW YORK and LONDON, Mar 23 2020 (IPS) – Austerity policies pushed by international financial institutions have weakened public health systems, despite current financial support packages, condemning many people to die.

As health systems of East Asia, , and the buckle under the strain of coronavirus, developing countries are expecting an even higher human toll. Decades of austerity promoted by international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and regional development banks have public health systems, impeding the ability of governments to respond to the pandemic.

The IMF pledged ,…

Garment workers wash hands before entering an apparel factory at the Ulail area in Savar, on April 28, 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare, in the cruellest way, the extraordinary precariousness and injustices of our world of work. Photo: Palash Khan

May 4 2020 – In these times of Covid-19, the big challenge for most of us is how to protect ourselves and our families from the virus and how to hold on to our jobs. For policymakers, that translates into beating the pandemic without doing irreversible damage to the economy in the process.

With over three million confirmed cases and over 230,000 victims of the virus to date globally, and the exp…

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Apr 7 2020 (IPS) – In 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation jointly launched the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The African Green Revolution Forum claims AGRA is the “world’s most important and impactful forum for African agriculture”.

The – to reduce food insecurity by half in at least 20 countries, to double the incomes of 20 million smallholder families by 2020, and to ensure at least 15 countries achieve and sustain a Green Revolution – have been to “increase the incomes and improve food security for 30 million farming households in 11 African countries by 2021”.

Jomo Kwame Su…

Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Apr 26 2020 (IPS) – Following the outbreak and declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic, there has been a flurry of scientific research and publications to address challenges posed by the …

A municipal truck sanitizes the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh in order to prevent COVID-19.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Jun 22 2020 (IPS) – One of the most densely populated countries in the world, Bangladesh exemplifies the triple blow that many emerging market countries have suffered from COVID-19: domestic slowdown caused by the disease and the efforts to contain its spread; a sharp decline in exports, particularly in the ready-made garment sector, and a drop in remittances. Its once robust economy has dramatically slowed in recent months.

To help Bangladesh during this crisis, the IMF has approved totaling around $732 million. IMF Country Focus spoke wi…

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 …