Displaced Palestinians gather at a United Nations school in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Aug. 26, 2014. Families found refuge after fleeing their homes in an area under heavy aerial bombardment in the besieged Palestinian territory. Credit: UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 13 2014 (IPS) – When the international pledging conference to rebuild a devastated Gaza ended in Cairo over the weekend the third such conference in less than six years the lingering question among donors was: is this the last of it or are there more assaults to come?
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon implicitly warned of the futility of the continuing exercise when he said: We c…
Survivors at a workshop in Pader, northern Uganda. Thousands of women were raped during Uganda’s civil war but there have been few government efforts to assist them. Credit: Rosebell Kagumire/IPS
WASHINGTON, Dec 10 2014 (IPS) – Nearly two dozen health, advocacy and faith groups are calling on President Barack Obama to take executive action clarifying that U.S. assistance can be used to fund abortion services for women and girls raped in the context of war and conflict.
The groups gathered Tuesday outside of the White House to draw attention to what they say is an ongoing misreading by politicians as well as humanitarian groups of four-decade-old legislation. That la…
This is the second of a two-part article analysing India’s plans to double coal production by the end of this decade. The article, by Chaitanya Kumar, South Asia Team Leader of 350.org, which is building a global climate movement through online campaigns, grassroots organising and mass public actions, offers four reasons why investors and the Indian government should be really wary of investing in coal for the long run. The first part, which was run on Mar. 18, dealt with the first two reasons; this second part looks at the final two.
Coal mining in India. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution t…
Whether they like it or not, many Africans faced with the possibility of having to access water through prepaid meters have resorted to unprotected and often unclean sources of water because they cannot afford to pay. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
HARARE, May 8 2015 (IPS) – While many countries appear to have met the U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, rights activists say that African countries which have taken to installing prepaid water meters have rendered a blow to many poor people, making it hard for them to access water.
“The goal to ensure that everyone has acces…
Providing pregnant mothers with antiretroviral medicines can reduce the risk of HIV transmission from 45 percent to just one percent, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 30 2015 (IPS) – In 2013, an estimated 240,000 children were born with HIV. This was an improvement from 2009, when 400,000 babies tested positive for the infection, but still a far cry from the global target of reducing total child infections to 40,000 by 2015.
Bucking the global trend, one small island nation has made gigantic strides towards the 2015 goal. That country is Cuba, and in 2013 it recorded just two babies born with…
Nora Happel interviews H.E. Alexandru Cujba, Secretary-General of the South-South Steering Committee for Sustainable Development (SS-SCSD) and Director-General of the International Organization for South-South Cooperation (IOSSC).
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 21 2015 (IPS) – Next month, the South-South Awards will be taking place for the fifth time, honouring the achievements and contributions of heads of state and government, as well as representatives from the private sector and civil society in promoting sustainable development in the Global South.
Alexandru Cujba. Credit: South-South…
A hospital in Srinagar, Kashmir. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS
SRINAGAR, India, Dec 18 2015 (IPS) – In an isolated ward of one of Kashmir’s largest government-run hospitals, 54-year-old Ashraf Ali Khan is finding it hard to sleep properly. His 15-year-old son, Asif, is sitting on a bench near the bed staring at his ailing father.
Asif has not been told by his family that his father is suffering from a potentially terminal disease cancer. He knows his father is suffering from a consistent fever which sent him to the hospital, but doesn’t know his father is in the last stage of the crippling disease.
Ashraf Ali, a carpenter, went to the doctor eight months …
The Agency Headquarters Hospital (AHH) in Bajaur Agency, shortly after a Taliban suicide bomb attack in 2013. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 2016 (IPS) – Hospitals, health care workers and patients in war zones are supposed to be protected under international humanitarian law yet recent attacks from Syria to Afghanistan suggest that they have become targets.
The seeming lack of respect for the sanctity of health care in war zones has prompted UN Security Council members in New York to consider a new resolution designed to find new ways to halt these attacks.
The Security Council is expected to vote on the resolution o…
Jun 7 2016 – Two things happened in Islamabad on the same day recently, one pertaining to the Council of Islamic Ideology and the other to Pemra, the electronic media regulator. CII sanctioned `lightly beating` of wives and Pemra banned (and then partially withdrew) advertisements of contraceptives.
The two seemingly unrelated events have more than their timing in common. Their relationship is intriguing and intense and covered by the same ignorance that so many in our society defend in the name of religion and culture.
But before I dilate on the link between the two, let me first contradict the maulanas who topped their shenanigans by declaring that wife-beating does not exist in our beloved country which is inhabited by pious Muslims. It not only exists, it is rampant.…
Jul 11 2016 – The current debate on the re-emergence of eugenics is worrying, as most of its proponents seem to be urging for gene manipulation for higher intelligence and beauty, while only a few are concerned with its dystopian implications.
The writer is a former federal secretary.
Plato was the first to develop the idea of eugenics, which literally means ‘good race/stock’, to improve the human race through controlled and selective mating. In ancient Greece, if a child was considered incapable of living independently by the city elders he was either executed or exposed to the elements to die. Similarly, the Fourth Law of t…