Miriam Gathigah
Better Aid Can Save Millions of Lives in Africa. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS
BUSAN, South Korea, Nov 29 2011 (IPS) – Although there has been considerable progress towards reducing maternal and infant mortality, millions of women and children in Africa are still in need of better health services, food and sanitation.
Better Aid C…
KARACHI, Jan 26 2012 (IPS) – He was a happy child, my younger brother, Mohammad Ramzan, 18, reminisced, his voice steeped in sadness.
A Pakistani child domestic worker. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi /IPS
Eldest among six siblings, Ramzan is still coming to terms with the murder of his 11-year-old brother, Shan Ali, who worked as a child domestic worker in a posh locality in the national capital, Islamabad.
Ali was allegedly strangled by his employer, Atiya Al Hussain, on Jan. 5, for neglecting her child.
She and her husband, Mudassar Abbas…
Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 7 2012 (IPS) – When the U.N. General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution back in September 2000 laying out eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it specified 2015 as the target date to achieve them.
A young girl in Cote d Ivoire fills a clay pot from a nearby well refurbished by UNICEF to make clean water accessible …
GOROKA, Apr 16 2012 (IPS) – Papua New Guinea’s infamous track record on gender-based violence – with an estimated 75 percent of women and children experiencing some form of violence, primarily domestic abuse – is poised to worsen.
A Highlands-based non-governmental organisation is warning that unless the government takes immediate action to prevent the risk of increased cash flows from the nation’s largest resource extraction project, which is escalating alcohol consumption and eroding family cohesion, violence against women and girls will very likely increase.
Construction of the 15 billion dollar is underway at a gas production and processing site near Tari, Hela Province, in the Highlands, and at liquefaction and storage plant on the south coast of Central Provi…
Irrigation in Kakamas, South Africa. Credit: Patrick Burnett/IPS
WASHINGTON, May 18 2012 (IPS) – On the eve of the Group of Eight (G8) summit near Washington, President Barack Obama on Friday unveiled a major new initiative aimed at shoring up food security and combating global hunger.
Speaking at an event here, the president said that the new programme, focused on Africa, aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty within 10 years.
But aid agencies and watchdog groups worry that the new programme, which includes a significant new role for the private sector, could prove diversionary for donors, resulting in a return to relatively low, unfocuse…
Shumi attends school and does shifts at a brick factory. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
DHAKA, Jul 3 2012 (IPS) – At first glance the smart young women in white overcoats, black rubber boots and protective face masks seem out of place in impoverished Bangladesh’s dirtiest industry – brick making.
But this factory in Savar, 35 km outside Dhaka, is no ordinary brick kiln. It is a Hybrid Hoffman Kiln (HHK) which uses modified German technology that drastically cuts down the smoke and soot associated with firing blocks of clay into bricks.
HHKs also use semi-automatic machines that do away with heavy manual labour, allowing women to be employed in brick-making in…
Sofía Gatica, with a loudspeaker, at a protest against agrochemicals. Credit: Mothers of Ituzaingó
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 17 2012 (IPS) – After more than a decade of campaigning against toxic agrochemicals, a group of women from a poor neighbourhood in the northern Argentine city of Córdoba have brought large-scale soybean growers to trial for the health damages caused by spraying.
The trial began in June, and the sentence is to be handed down on Aug. 21. In the dock are two soybean producers, Francisco Parra and Jorge Gabrielli, and the pilot of a spray plane, Edgardo Pancello.
The prosecutors are seeking four years of prison for Parra and three years fo…
A three-day polio vaccination campaign kicked off throughout Darfur on Feb. 28, 2011 as part of the Sudanese Government’s efforts to eradicate the disease. Credit: UN Photo/Olivier Chassot
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 6 2012 (IPS) – It was early July 2004, and Darfur was looking like a war zone massive human displacements of an, ongoing skirmishes, inclement weather, a parched landscape due to the recurring droughts, and sheer misery everywhere.
The worst affected were women and children. Each passing day, the agony and suffering we witnessed was heartbreaking. There was an urgent need to quickly immunise all children in Sudan, and this included Darfur, to prevent , a life-thr…
Many countries in Latin America have made progress in introducing sex education in schools. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
HAVANA, Nov 13 2012 (IPS) – Learning about respect in a relationship, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender equality and family planning forms part of the right to sex education that is still not enjoyed by all children and adolescents in Latin America.
“They talk to us in school about teen pregnancy and safe and responsible sex,” Leonardo Martínez, a 12-year-old student in Havana, told IPS. “I did homework about children’s rights, and thanks to that we learned more about how important sex education is.”
However, Javier García, who is …
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy hands a memento to a disabled student at a ceremony in Thiruvananthapuram, India Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India , Dec 22 2012 (IPS) – Twenty-year-old Reshma, hailing from the village of Aryanad in the Thiruvananthapuram district of the South Indian state of Kerala, was forced to drop out of school early as a result of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Her parents had just about given up hope on their daughter’s future when she received admission to the Centre for Disability Studies (CDS) in Thiruvananthapuram city.
After six months of counselling, which included the unusual but proven method…