Credit: UN News Centre
ROME, Jun 12 2017 (IPS) – Globally over 1.5 billion people live in countries that are affected by conflict, violence and fragility. Meantime, around 200 million people are affected by disasters every year—a third of them are children. And a significant proportion of the 168 million children engaged in child labour live in areas affected by conflict and disaster. These are the facts. Up to you to reflect on the immediate future of humankind.
Conflicts and disasters have a devastating impact on people’s lives, the United Nations .
“They kill, maim, injure, force people to flee their homes, destroy livelihoods, push people into po…
Shamshad Akhtar, is Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
Erik Solheim, is Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
BANGKOK, Thailand, Sep 4 2017 (IPS) – Senior government officials from across Asia and the Pacific will meet in Bangkok this week for the first-ever Asia-Pacific Ministerial Summit on the Environment. The high-level meeting is co-convened by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) and UN Environment and is a unique opportunity for the region’s environment leaders to discuss how they can work together towards a resource efficient and pollution-free Asia-Pacific.
Angela, 15, from Hyderabad, India. Her vision of a violence-free world would be to live like the mermaid in her painting – free and happy. Stella Paul/IPS
INDIA/CAMEROON, Nov 26 2017 (IPS) – Sally Mboumien remembers the day she pressed a steaming hot stone against her chest. In Bawock, the rural community of western Cameroon where she grew up, young girls often had their young, sprouting breasts flattened with a hot iron or a hammer or spatulas that had been heated over burning coals.
This was good for the girls bec…
Labourers urgently construct new roads ahead of the monsoon season in Bangladesh’s Kutupalong Rohingya camp. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
DHAKA, Feb 28 2018 (IPS) – More than half a million Rohingya refugees crammed into over 30 makeshift camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeast Bangladesh face a critical situation as the cyclone and monsoon season begins in a few weeks’ time.
The United Nations and international and local NGOs, along with the Bangladeshi government, have issued emergency calls to safeguard the population, especially those who a…
Carmen Rosa (left) and Maria Elena in their small home in Cajamarca, Peru. Credit: Andrea Vale/IPS
LIMA, May 30 2018 (IPS) – Eighty percent of the world’s disabled live in developing nations, according to a report by the United Nations. Their identities, lives and stories are of course varied – but what isn’t is the stigma and lack of resources they face.
If one were to take a ride up a dirt road high in the Andes Mountains, one would find Roberto sitting propped up against the wall of a barn on the side of that road, watching the occasional truck whizz by. Roberto, …
The swift descent of the elderly in India into non-communicable diseases could have various disastrous consequences.
Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS
NEW DELHI, Aug 21 2018 (IPS) – Old age morbidity is a rapidly worsening curse in India. The swift descent of the elderly in India (60 years+) into non-commu…
Roberto Savio is founder of IPS Inter Press Service and President Emeritus
ROME, Jan 17 2019 (IPS) – After Theresa May’s defeat in the British parliament it is clear that a new spectre is haunting Europe. It is no longer the spectre of communism, which opens Marx’s Manifesto of 1848; it is the spectre of the failure of neoliberal globalisation, which reigned uncontested following the fall of the Berlin Wall, until the financial crisis of 2009.
Roberto Savio
In 2008, governments spent the astounding amount of 62 trillion dollars to save the financial system, and close to that amount in 2009 (see Britannica Book of the Year, 2017), According to a US Federal…
A bakery shop in Cairo, Egypt. Egyptian flatbread, known as Aish baladi or country bread is on the table of all Egyptians, even the poorest, thanks to a smartcard system that assigns certain quantities to each family to avoid unnecessary waste.
CAIRO, Apr 18 2019 (IPS) – “Unfortunately the overall nutritional panorama of Egypt does not look well,” says Dr. Sara Diana Garduno Diaz, an expert concentrating on nutrition and biology at the American University of the Middle East. Diaz’s research focuses on dietary patterns and ethnic-associated risk factors for metabolic syndrome.
“While traditionally a country known for its lavish and welcoming food patterns, the…
Yohei Sasakawa, chair of The Nippon Foundation and World Health Organisation (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination, delivered a keynote address at the 20th International Leprosy Congress (ILC). Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
MANILA, Sep 11 2019 (IPS) – Forty years ago, Yohei Sasakawa saw his father moved to tears after meeting and witnessing the suffering of people affected by leprosy – also known as Hansen’s disease. Not only did the patients have a physical illness, but they also suffered from social exclusion and discrimination. It made the young Sasakawa vow to work for the elimination of leprosy from the world – just as his father had been doing.
Decade…
Teruhiko Mashiko, Japan Parliamentary Federation for Population
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 13 2019 (IPS) – The Japan Parliamentary Federation for Population represented by Mr Teruhiko Mashiko and its secretariat, the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) has made a clear and concrete commitment to endorse the ICPD25 agenda. Mashiko tells IPS that Japan, as should every country driven by the well-being of its population, should create the best possible conditions to achieve the ICPD25 agenda.
Interview by Joyce Chimbi at the ICPD25 in Nairobi, Kenya
Q. What lessons are there for developing countries from Japan to accelerate the achieve…