Circumcisers in the Gambia publicly declaring that they have abandoned the practice of FGM. Credit: Saikou Jammeh/IPS
BANJUL, Jul 13 2014 (IPS) – Women’s rights activists in the Gambia are insisting that more than 30 years of campaigning to raise awareness should be sufficient to move the government to outlaw female genital mutilation (FMG).
The practice remains widespread in this tiny West African country of 1.8 million people, but rights activists believe that their campaign has now reached the tipping point.
Two years ago, , an apolitical non-governmental organ…
Men line up to receive food distributed by Coalition for the Homeless volunteers at 35th St, FDR Drive, in New York City. Credit: Zafirah Mohamed Zein/IPS
NEW YORK, Aug 25 2014 (IPS) – Joe sits on newspapers spread on the sidewalk by the entrance to midtown s Grand Central Station. His head rests in his hands, only looking up when coins from passersby clink into his paper cup.
“A shelter is like a prison without guards,” he says, when asked why he was out on the street. “I’m done with them.”“A few things happened after the war. The government just forgot about me. Not only just me but a lot of others too.” — Don, a Vietnam veteran
The 36-year-o…
IPS correspondent Joan Erakit interviews DR. BABATUNDE OSOTIMEHIN, executive director of UNFPA.
Shahida Amin, a young Pakistani woman, brings her 10-month-old son to school every day. Credit: Farooq Ahmed/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 2014 (IPS) – The Programme of Action adopted at the landmark 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) included chapters that defined concrete actions covering some 44 dimensions of population and development, including the need to provide for women and girls during times of conflict, the urgency of investments in young people’s capabilities, and the importance of women’s political participation and r…
“There is Strength in Unity” – public service message for the ‘Africa United’ campaign to prevent the spread of Ebola in West Africa. Credit: African Press Organization (APO)
MALABO, Equatorial Guinea, Dec 3 2014 (IPS) – The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has joined a number of football stars, celebrities, international health organisations and corporations in the ‘Africa United’ global health communications campaign aimed at preventing the spread of Ebola in West Africa.
The campaign, which was launched on Dec. 3, is supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation and driven creatively by actor…
Pastor Demas Rodríguez shows a dry composting toilet in the town of Babiney, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS
BABINEY, Cuba , Jan 31 2015 (IPS) – Most people in Cuba without toilets use the traditional outhouse. But an innovative, ecological alternative is catching on in remote rural communities.
So far 85 dry latrines have been installed in eastern Cuba – the poorest part of the country thanks to the support of the non-governmental ecumenical Bartolomé G. Lavastida Christian Centre for Service and Training (CCSC-Lavastida) based in Santiago de Cuba, 847 km from Havana, which carries out development projects in this region.
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In Bangladesh, dramatic reductions in open defecation contributed to large declines in the number of stunted children. Credit: Mahmuddun Rashed Manik/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 2015 (IPS) – Nearly half of the world’s hungry, amounting to about 363 million people, live in some of the rising middle income countries, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Mexico, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
The (GFPR) calls on these developing nations, described as “rising economic powerhouses,” to reshape their food systems to focus on nutrition and health, close the gender gap in agr…
In this column, José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), writes that in the last 50 years life expectancy has increased almost everywhere but has been accompanied by a rise in so-called non-communicable diseases which are increasingly causing deaths worldwide. The author says that much of the increase can be attributed to unhealthy diets, and takes the diets of Japan and the Mediterranean area as examples to follow for achieving higher life expectancy.
ROME, May 5 2015 (IPS) – In the last half-century, people’s lifestyles have changed dramatically. Life expectancy has risen almost everywhere, but this has been accompanied by an increase of so-called non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, …
Children from informal settlements in Pakistan’s most populous city, Karachi, are often sent out with large containers to fetch water from taps outside private homes, set up by wealthier residents as an act of charity. Credit: Zofeen T. Ebrahim/IPS
KARACHI, Jun 25 2015 (IPS) – Over 950 people have perished in just five days. The morgues, already filled to capacity, are piling up with bodies, and in over-crowded hospitals the threat of further deaths hangs in the air.
Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, home to over 23 million people, is gasping in the grip of a dreadful heat wave, the worst the country has experienced since the 1950s, according to the Meteorology Dep…
Plastic bags and bottles comprise a major part of the rubbish that clogs this delicate mountain ecosystem when scores of Hindu devotees flock to the Amarnath cave in Kashmir to worship a representation of the god Shiva. Credit: Athar Parvaiz/IPS
PAHALGAM, India, Aug 17 2015 (IPS) – As he struggled to find a section of the stream clean enough to rinse off his muddy shoes, Mohan Kumar, a Hindu pilgrim on his way to the holy Amarnath shrine in Indian-administered Kashmir, gazed with despair over the filth that lay thick on the landscape.
“I fail to understand how our journey of faith can reconcile with all this filth.” — Mohan Kumar, a Hindu pilgrim on his way to the ho…
Thanks to PMTCT, three year old Nokuthula Mukonto (pictured) in Shurugwi’s Chida village does not have HIV despite being born to parents living with the virus. Her father, 50-year old Partrick, a high school teacher by profession, has lived with HIV for more than 15 years now while her mother, 43-year old, Mildred, has lived for eight years with the disease, and now an ardent anti-MTCT campaigner. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
SHURUGWI, Zimbabwe, Dec 1 2015 (IPS) – With the battle to combat HIV/AIDS intensifying in Zimbabwe, the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission initiative (PMTCT) has increasingly become a success weapon in the war on transmission of the once dreade…