Across the world, climate change and Covid-19 disruptions have led to rising food prices in the past year. Southeast Asian countries, which have not been immune to such challenges, need to build resilience in their food security policies.

Jun 24 2021 (IPS) – In 2020, Southeast Asian countries were already facing varied challenges that affected the region’s food supplies and prices. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic later in the year exacerbated the region’s food insecurity and poverty. Southeast Asian countries need to take a hard look at food security, even as the double challenges — climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic — continue to fester.

Paul Teng

So…

Delegates from Asia and Africa met during a two-day conference to discuss ICPD25 programme of action. Credit: APDA

Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug 23 2021 (IPS) – Politicians from Asia and Africa shared activism anecdotes demonstrating their determination to meet ICPD 25 commitments. They were speaking at a hybrid conference held simultaneously in Kampala, Uganda, and online.

Ugandan MP Kabahenda Flavia dramatically told the conference that women parliamentarians in her country stampeded the budget process to ensure there was potential to recruit midwives and nurses at health centres. Another told of a breastfeeding lawmaker who brought her child to parliament, fo…

Building on its innovative model that has already reached +4.6 million children & adolescents in the world’s worst humanitarian crises, Education Cannot Wait calls for urgent, bold investments in education in emergency programmes to avoid irreversible loss for entire generations.

GENEVA / NEW YORK, Oct 5 2021 – On this World Teachers’ Day, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, announced it has reached more than 4.6 million children and adolescents (48% of whom are girls) with quality education in more than 30 of the worst humanitarian crises around the world.

The Fund’s new Annu…

An includable leader knows that not everyone comes from the same space with the same privileges. They are aware of systemic barriers that dictate interactions between people of different genders, classes, or abilities, according to the …

Parents at Alheri leprosy colony outside Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, Abuja have appealed for an end to discrimination, which they say impacts their children.
Credit: Oluwatobi Enitan/IPS

Abuja, Nigeria, Feb 3 2022 (IPS) – Seidu Ishaiku lives in the hope that his children will succeed. He and his family live with about 300 other residents in the Alheri leprosy colony outside Nigeria s Federal Capital Territory Abuja.

They (our children) are obviously ou…

Supported by the European Journalism Centre*

Viraj from India, in a squat where he has been living for three months near Velika Kladusa, Bosnia. He hopes to join family in Italy. February 2022. Credit: Chiara Luxardo

Bihać, Bosnia, Apr 19 2022 (IPS) – Responding to several shouts Viraj emerges from the ruins of his shelter in northwest Bosnia. He is originally from India but is now squatting near Bihać in what remains of a house abandoned since the 1990s Balkans war.

“I was in the bathroom,” says Viraj although there is no such facility. The building doesn’t even have windows, just gaps exposed to a freezing wind. Collapsing walls are patched wit…

Children working on tobacco farms in Chipangali District in Eastern Province of Zambia. Credit: Brenda Chitindi

 
 “Most major tobacco producing countries use child labour in tobacco growing. Almost no cigarette can be
 guaranteed to be free from child labour.”
 , 2015.

HONG KONG / LOME, May 17 2022 (IPS) – Despite World Day Against Child Labour launched in 2002 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), little has changed over the past two decades for the millions of children who remain .

To rescue children and achieve sustainable human and health rights improvements, laws that make corporations accoun…

Credit: Freepik

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 2022 (IPS) – India and China, two Asian nuclear powers who are also longstanding rivals embroiled in the geo-politics of the Indian Ocean region, have remained two of the world’s most populous nations accounting for over a billion people each.

But as the world’s population reaches the 8.0 billion mark, come November, India is projected to surpass China.

The current numbers stand at 1.44 billion people in China and 1.39 billion in India. But the numbers are expected to change as India races ahead of China. The US ranks third with over 335 million people. By the end of last yar, the world’s total population was app…