By Prof. Margaret Kobia, Amb. Aline Kuster-Ménager, Amb. Erasmo Martinez Martine and Siddharth Chatterjee Gender equality is a basic human right and a prerequisite for sustainable development, so why does inequality persist in so many countries, and what can we…
Sir Frank Peters 2020 will be a year full of fun, celebrations, and joyful activities. It will be written in the annals of history, as the year Bengalis celebrated not one, not two, but three New Years! Yes, three! It…
Tea Trumbic Today, women have just three-quarters of the legal rights of men. In 1970, it was less than half. The Women, Business and the Law 2020 report presented results from our recent effort to document how laws have changed…
Danielle Nierenberg This Sunday, March 8, is International Women’s Day. Since 1911, people around the world have observed International Women’s Day honour women’s advancements and highlight the barriers women still encounter. Today, women hold over half of agricultural science degrees…
By Askiah Adam Russia is pushing back the Turkish Army in Idlib. As the Turks broke through the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) defence the latter called for air assistance from Russia. The fighters came and victory was the SAA’s. With…
By Natalie Southwick and Renata Neder NEW YORK, Mar 4 2020 (IPS) – Brazilian journalist Patrícia Campos Mello made her career reporting from conflict zones around the world — but lately, the greatest threats to her security are coming from…
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 2020 (IPS) – Twenty-five years after the historic Beijing women’s conference in China – a milestone in advancing equal rights – violence against women and girls is not only common, but widely accepted, a new UN…
By Anna Tonelli NEW YORK, Mar 3 2020 (IPS) – This International Women’s Day, 25 years after we first heard it declared that “women’s rights are human rights” at the historic Beijing 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, we need…
North East India Ramsar Wetlands in Crisis: March 1, 2020SANDRP There are three Ramsar sites in eight states of north east India which includes Deepor Beel in Assam, Loktak lake in Manipur and Rudrasagar in Tripura. There are no Ramsar…
By Manlio Dinucci At the London Summit, the 29 member countries of NATO agreed to “guarantee the security of our communications, including 5G”. Why is this fifth generation of mobile data transmission so important for NATO? While the earlier technologies…
Sir Frank Peters If Almighty Allah is the greatest mentor/teacher ever known to mankind with superior wisdom way beyond the abilities of mastermind earthlings like Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking, why are people (school-teachers, imams and parents) ignoring his wisdom…
by Marzia Maccaferri and Andrea Mammone on 24th February 2020 @MarziaMacCaferr Last month the Italian far-right failed to seize the left-wing bastion of Emilia-Romagna. But the election results raise wider challenges for the resistance to rising populism.
By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS, Feb 18 2020 (IPS) – When UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the 193-member General Assembly last December, he focused on the smoldering climate crisis– pointing out that the last five years have been the hottest…
By Angus Wright, Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer OAKLAND, California, Feb 18 2020 (IPS) – When we were children, a long auto trip would require a stop every hour or so to clean the windshield of the insects that had…
By Fairuz Ahmed NEW YORK, Feb 17 2020 (IPS) – For any riverine country, the state of the water body around big cities and conditions of major rivers hold a leadership position in the overall climate effects and how the…
Electric vehicles could be integral to the world improving its environmental performance. GlobalData’s power technology writer, JP Casey says: “Thanks to improvements in operational efficiency and reductions in the production of harmful pollutants compared to combustion engine-powered vehicles, hope has…
By Thalif Deen UN, Feb 17 2020 (IPS) – When President Saddam Hussein ran one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes in the militarily-volatile Middle East during 1979-2003, US newspapers routinely described him as “the strongman of Iraq” — as…
By Samira Sadeque UN, Feb 13 2020 (IPS) – When society doesn’t act to prevent Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) it has a massive economic cost — over $1 billion — on communities globally. And while the practice is starting to…
By Ameen Izzadeen COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Feb 10 2020 (IPS) – In the wake of the latest coronavirus outbreak, movie buffs are drawing an eerie parallel with the film Contagion, a 2011 thriller based on a lethal airborne virus called…
by Stan Dupré PARIS – European Union member states and the European Parliament are soon expected to adopt a so-called “taxonomy” for classifying green investments, after reaching an agreement last month on a list of “sustainable” economic activities. Once the…
8 February 2020 Fresh fears of accelerating damage to the planet’s ice sheets and sea-level rise have been fuelled by confirmation from the UN’s weather agency that the Antarctic likely saw a new temperature record of more than 18°C on…
Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong hit hardest, bottlenecks in low-value parts threaten downstream units By Umesh Desai The coronavirus outbreak in China, which started in the city of Wuhan, has had analysts scrambling to lower growth forecasts across the board,…
Danielle Nierenberg Efforts to raise awareness about—and create solutions to—food loss and food waste continue to expand throughout the globe. And some of the most creative and impactful solutions are happening in the Middle East.
By Sapna Gopal HIMALAYAS, India, Jan 30 2020 (IPS) – Vandana Shiva, a pioneer of organic farming in India, is incensed by the 2019 draft law to compulsorily register all seeds used by farmers. On a wintry afternoon, at her…
By Stella Paul DJIBOUTI CITY, Jan 29 2020 (IPS) – Neema Namdamu, 42, grew up in the village of Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where children with disabilities were considered a curse.
Sudhirendar Sharma In their quest to create an identity distinct from India, Islamic identity has only proved regressive for a vibrant plural society. For the people of any country engagement with their lived reality plays a significant role in renegotiating…
By Samira Sadeque UN, Jan 23 2020 (IPS) – More than 70 percent of the global population is currently living in parts of the world where income inequality has grown, according to a World Social Report 2020 launched by United…
NEW YORK, Jan 21 2020 (IPS) – Inequality is growing for more than 70 per cent of the global population, exacerbating the risks of divisions and hampering economic and social development. But the rise is far from inevitable and can…
By Pierpaolo Grippa, Jochen Schmittmann, and Felix Suntheim WASHINGTON DC, Jan 16 2020 (IPS) – Climate change is already a reality. Ever-more-ferocious cyclones and extended droughts lead to the destruction of infrastructure and the disruption of livelihoods and contribute to…
By Joseph Chamie NEW YORK, Jan 20 2020 (IPS) – Whenever the issue of population comes up, pro-growth demographic dogma invariably dominates. Governments, political parties, businesses, the media and many others typically praise population growth and lament population slowdown, stabilization…