By: Jennifer del Rosario-Malonzo 28 September 2019, New York City — Following a disappointing Climate Action Summit that yielded few commitments, despite science showing the need for urgent system change, and a Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Summit acknowledging that the…
UN, Sep 27 2019 (IPS) – A week ago, downtown New York witnessed one of the most historic moments in the climate action moment — hundreds of thousands of people attended the Climate Strike, where teen activists delivered powerful speeches…
Geneva, Sep 27 2019 (IPS) – “Six years after initiating my term as Special Rapporteur, it is sobering to say that the way to freedom from slavery remains long in spite of the legal abolition of slavery worldwide,” said UN…
Sudhirendar Sharma While there is no denying that algorithms have eased life by managing the information explosion, that it does so at the cost of reducing rich diversity into a world of niches has often gone unnoticed? Google does what…
New International Law Is Essential to Retain Human Control Over Use of Force New York – France, Germany, and other nations that are committed to a rules-based international order should begin negotiations on a new international treaty to ban preemptively…
By Anna Shen UN, Sep 26 2019 (IPS) – On Monday, United States President Donald Trump continued to float the idea that he should be awarded a Nobel Prize, but that it would never happen because the system was rigged.
When I think back to some of the earliest days of my childhood, I remember moments like this—my brother Craig and I, smiling outside on the South Side of Chicago. It was there, in a diverse and changing neighborhood, that…
By Thalif Deen UN, Sep 23 2019 (IPS) – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres describes the ongoing crisis as a “climate emergency”– as the world continues its hard-fought battle against devastating droughts, floods, hurricanes and rising sea levels that threaten the…
By Vandana Shiva New Delhi, Sep 23 2019 (IPS) – The Earth is living, and also creates life. Over 4 billion years the Earth has evolved a rich biodiversity — an abundance of different living organisms and ecosystems — that…
By Thalif Deen UN, Sep 2019 (IPS) – The two key goals in the UN’s development agenda are the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.
Geneva, Sept (Kanaga Raja) – Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the ongoing hostilities in the armed conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic, which has now entered its ninth year, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry has said.
By Andrew Norton London, Sep 20 2019 (IPS) – In an alarming imbalance struggling families in rural Bangladesh spend almost US$2 billion a year on preventing climate-related disasters or repairing damage caused by climate change ― far more than either…
John Kjorstad, September 18, 2019 No one understands the financial risks of climate change better than insurance companies. As I sit down to write this blog on what we need to accelerate and fund the convergence of infrastructure and technology,…
By Jan Lundius Stockholm / Rome, Sep 12 2019 (IPS) – When I in 1980 first arrived in America it was a new world to me. I went from New York to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and like…
By Abdullah Yusuf Sep 9 2019 (IPS) – August is immensely important in the history of the Asian subcontinent, marking the month that India and Pakistan gained independence from the British in 1947. Now, in 2019, it has once again…
By Razeena Raheem UN, Sep 13 2019 (IPS) – When UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched the International Solar Alliance last October, he applauded the goal of mobilizing about $1 trillion dollars towards the deployment of some 1,000 gigawatts of solar…
Sudhirendar Sharma Sultry weather made me realize that soaking dress in sweat alone should suffice, why either of the hapless inner wears face the same ordeal. It occurred to me later that I was being water wise, letting one apparel…
Dubbed “break bone fever”, dengue is one of the world’s leading mosquito-borne illnesses and infects tens of millions across the globe annually.
Water and sanitation service providers must harness all available talent to achieve their goals. Removing barriers to female employment in the sector has numerous benefits not only for women, but for utilities as well.
By Ranjit Devraj New Delhi, Sep 4 2019 (IPS) – Expectations are high, perhaps too high, as the 14th Conference of the Parties (CoP 14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), now into the third day of…
04 September 2019, Kathmandu – South Asian countries have failed to make the use of economic growth in the region to improve the lives of the poor and marginalized people of the community, mostly women, girls and marginalised communities and…
Sudhirendar Sharma It is only recently, after he turned 70, that he sought to do away with the impulsive act he defined as ‘thrill’, something that seems to have eluded the forthright government official. Having known him from his pre-retirement…
By Srinivas Tata and Jaco Cilliers Bangkok, Thailand, (IPS) – It’s 1962, and in a modest Hong Kong neighbourhood, a poetic love story unfolds. Filmed almost twenty years ago, Wong Kar-wai’s seminal movie In the Mood for Love captured the…
by Kostas Botopoulos on 2nd September 2019 Proroguing Westminster is a transparent manoeuvre by Boris Johnson to set up a ‘people versus Parliament’ election, even with the UK on course to crash out of the EU.
By Thalif Deen UN, Aug 29 2019 (IPS) – When two-time Wimbledon tennis champion Boris Becker, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, refused to make a commitment not to play in South Africa, a country blacklisted for its apartheid policies, the UN…
Lei Lei Song Since 2014, South Asia has been the fastest-growing subregion in the world, with its eight economies collectively boasting average annual growth of 7.0%. This is higher even than East Asia (6.2%), which includes China; Southeast Asia (4.9%);…
JENNIFER J. SARA The global water crisis is a matter of too much, too little, and too polluted. Flooding, drought, dirty waterways—all have made the news these past 12 months.
By Shuvojit Banerjee and Poh Lynn Ng Bangkok, Aug 2019 (IPS) – Asia and the Pacific is lauded globally for its rapid economic growth over recent decades and has lifted 1.1 billion people out of extreme poverty since 1990. Nevertheless,…
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 23 2019 (IPS) – Two years after the start of an exodus of Rohingya civilians from genocide-like attacks in Myanmar, members of the mainly Muslim minority have little hope of securing justice, rights or returning to their…
Should Americans, as part of their school curriculum, learn Arabic numerals? CivicScience, a Pittsburgh-based research firm, put that question to some 3,200 Americans recently in a poll seemingly about mathematics, but the outcome was a measure of students’ attitudes toward…