Danielle Nierenberg The United Nations released a report in September titled “State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017,” identifying a five-percent increase in global hunger from 2015 to 2016. According to the report, the number of chronically…
By Manuel F. Montes New York, Sep 26 (IPS) – In discussions at the UN about achieving Agenda 2030, it has become de rigueur to highlight the role of the private sector. It is often introduced as the discovery of…
Robert J. Burrowes Gandhi Jayanti – 2 October, the date of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s birth in 1869 and the International Day of Nonviolence – offers an opportunity to reflect on human violence and to ponder ways to end it. There…
By Miroslav Lajcak UN, Sep 25 (IPS) – When the Charter of Algiers was adopted 50 years ago, it marked the unity of the Group of 77. This unity has not wavered since then. The G77 is the biggest group…
SANDRP Report In the detailed piece, Himanshu Thakkar rightly says that the river interlinking project will adversely affect land, forests, biodiversity, rivers and the livelihood of millions of people. On the other hand it would not be helpful for irrigation,…
Gar Smith War is humanity’s deadliest activity. From 500 BC to AD 2000 history records more than 1000 [1,022] major documented wars. In the 20th Century, an estimated 165 wars killed as many as 258 million people — more than…
By Mahfuzur Rahman Dhaka, Sep 20 (IPS) – Bangladesh is a disaster-prone country with floods hitting almost every year, leaving a trail of destruction despite having early warning systems. Now experts say it is time for the delta nation to…
By Tharanga Yakupitiyage UN, Sep 20 (IPS) – After finally breaking the silence with a much anticipated address on the ongoing crisis in Rakhine State, Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has disappointed the world as she refuses…
By Farid Ahmed Cox’s Bazar, Sep 18 (IPS) – Forsaken and driven out by their home country Myanmar, tens of thousands of Rohingyas are struggling to survive in Bangladesh’s border districts amid scarcities of food, clean water and medical care,…
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and Bambang Susantono Potsdam/Manila – It’s monsoon season in Asia – marking an end to months of scorching temperatures. But the extreme heat will return, with cities facing particularly brutal conditions. Already, Asia’s urban areas experience twice…
Dawn Stover If you turned to any cable news channel lately, you probably saw in-depth coverage of the hurricane du jour. A sombre meteorologist pointed to a map depicting the storm’s predicted path, then cut away to the latest satellite…
By Desmond Tutu My dear Aung San Suu Kyi I am now elderly, decrepit and formally retired, but breaking my vow to remain silent on public affairs out of profound sadness about the plight of the Muslim minority in your…
Masum Billah Dhaka – Out of about sixty-four thousand government primary schools, twenty-one thousand have been running without their head teachers. A Bengali daily has highlighted this news making it much enriched with many relevant data and information. Though the…
By Prof. Dr Imtiyaz Yusuf Myanmar is a non-secular Buddhist majority country. The majority of Myanmar peoples are Buddhist, including both ethnic Burmans and non-Burman ethnic minorities. Buddhists make up 89.8 percent of the population, Christians 6.3 percent and Muslims…
Dear Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, We learned today that you will address the Rohingya issue via television in Myanmar on 19 September – over 144 hours from now. We also learned that you will not attend the upcoming…
By Baher Kamal Rome, Sep 12 (IPS) – Pressures on global land resources are now greater than ever, as a rapidly increasing population coupled with rising levels of consumption is placing ever-larger demands on the world’s land-based natural capital, warns…
By Farhana Haque Rahman Dhaka, Sep 11 (IPS) – When you were finally able to accept your Nobel Peace Prize, you spoke eloquently of the ultimate aim of a world in which “every corner is a true sanctuary where the…
By Robert Jensen Now that the violence in Charlottesville has forced “white supremacy” into our political vocabulary, let’s ask an uncomfortable question: “When will the United States transcend white supremacy?”
by Graham Gudgin The great majority of the economic forecasts have concluded that Brexit will damage the UK economy. In the case of ‘no deal’ between the UK and the EU, the majority view is that the loss of GDP…
by Jennifer J. Sara Last week, water practitioners gathered in Stockholm for World Water Week. This is an annual meeting to discuss the world’s water issues, organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute. And if any reminder were needed as…
By Manipadma Jena Bhubaneswar, India, Sep 7 (IPS) – Dauntlessly crusading against curbs on freedom of speech, fifty-five-year-old Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh was gunned down at her very doorstep in Bengaluru city on the evening of Sep. 5, taking three…
A new research found that plastic fibers have infiltrated the drinking water of cities and towns all over the world Tap water is considered to be the safest in the statistics about drinking water coverage that our government provides us.…
Robert J. Burrowes For those of us committed to systematically reducing and, one day, ending human violence, it is vital to understand what is causing and driving it so that effective strategies can be developed for dealing with violence in…
By Chandra Muzaffar The Rohingyas — or at least some Rohingyas — are now being projected as terrorists, as “Jihadists” out to kill Myanmar soldiers and civilians. Myanmar leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi have spoken along these lines. This…
Martin Jacques There have been two great political turning points in postwar Britain. The first was in 1945 with the election of the Attlee government. Driven by a popular wave of determination that peacetime Britain would look very different from…
Masum Billah The different teacher organizations have been on the streets for several months with the demand to nationalize education. We can remember the retired education secretary Nazrul Islam Khan happened to meet the prime minister who wanted to know…
by Béla Galgóczi The crisis has put an end to wage convergence of the poorer Central and Eastern European new EU member states (EU-11, being: Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia (2004), Bulgaria, Romania (2007) and Croatia (2013))…
Mahmoud Mohieldin Medellin – In September 2015, the leaders of 193 countries agreed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the most ambitious plan ever to promote human development – by 2030. Nearly two years into the process, there…
By Oyun Sanjaasuren Stockholm, Aug 28 (IPS) – This week people gather from around the globe at the annual Stockholm World Week. If previous years are anything to go by, the “Water is life” cliché will be repeated endlessly. But the…
By Richard Falk A modified and enlarged version of a talk Richard Falk gave in Geneva a week ago. The audience was a blend of students of all ages from around the world, with almost none from Europe and North…