In this special series of reports, IPS journalists travel to the border region between Bangladesh and Myanmar to speak with Rohingya refugees, humanitarian workers and officials about the still-unfolding human rights and health crises facing this long-marginalized and persecuted community.
A group of Rohingya children emerge from a nearby religious school in Kutupalong camp. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh, Dec 5 2017 (IPS) – Mariam Akhtar, 23, is desperately searching for her young daughter two weeks after arriving from Myanmar in Cox’s Bazar, a …
Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.
First Lady of Kenya, Ms Margaret Kenyatta with President Uhuru Kenyatta at the State House in Nairobi Kenya, during the launch of the Second Strategic Framework to improve maternal & child health on 08 March 2018. Credit: State House
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 12 2018 (IPS) – Mr. Maina Kiai’s account () of the exciting dialogue hosted at Stanford University, USA does not present a true account of what transpired at that meeting.
The former WFP Executive Director Ambassador Ertharin Cousin, students, professors, Silicon Valley professionals and civil society were present at this meeting.…
Pulses are good for nutrition and income, particularly for women farmers who look after household food security, like those shown here at a village outside Lusaka, Zambia. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
BRUSSELS, Jun 8 2018 (IPS) – Lawmakers at the highest levels urgently need a “revolution in thinking” to tackle the twin problem of sustainable food production and migration. Starting with an inaugural event in Brussels, then travelling on to New York and Milan, an international team o…
Manipadma Jena interviews the executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute TORGNY HOLMGREN
In south west coastal Satkhira, Bangladesh as salinity has spread to freshwater sources, a private water seller fills his 20-litre cans with public water supply to sell in islands where poor families spend 300 Bangladesh Taka every month to buy drinking and cooking water alone. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
STOCKHOLM, Sep 11 2018 (IPS) – Growing economies are thirsty economies. And water scarcity has become “the new normal” in many parts of the world, according to Torgny Holmgren executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
A young teenage mother, pregnant again, sits with her young child in the Sawré Muybu indigenous village in the Amazonian state of Pará in northern Brazil. Teenage pregnancy is one of the common problems facing Latin America. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 30 2019 (IPS) – The crusade against comprehensive sex education by conservative and religious sectors undermines progress in Latin America and could further …
Ambassador Monica Juma is the Cabinet Secretary (Minister), of Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A mother and her infant in Kenya. Credit: @UNFPAKenya
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 24 2019 (IPS) – In 1994 the International Conference and Population and Development (ICPD) was hosted in Cairo by the Government of Egypt. Twenty-five years later, Kenya is ready to convene the ICPD “Nairobi Summit” in November 2019.
The Programme of Action endorsed and adopted at the historic Conference in Cairo has had a tremendous effect in transforming the lives of women and girls in developing countries. A quarter century later, the international community will again converge, th…
Do women suffer a great loss of employment compared to men after a major health shock such as a serious illness or a disability or both? Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
ROME and MASSACHUSETTS, Sep 19 2019 (IPS) – In a life peppered with tragedy, Mary Shelley wrote in 1818, “Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery?” That this accurately sums up the fate of many women in South Asia who suffer a major health shock such as a serious illness or a disability or both, is hard to dispute.
Farhana Haque Rahman
The rising burden of …
A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 2019 (IPS) – Ending the practice of defecating in the open, rather than in a toilet, will have “transformational benefits” for some of the world’s most vulnerable people, says the UN’s partner sanitation body, the WSSCC (Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council).
Ahead …
HarvestPlus*
HARARE, Zimbabwe, Jan 27 2020 (IPS) – Steven Seremwe, who is 57 years old, was retrenched from his job as an administrator at Lake Shore Missions in 2012. He decided to focus on farming, and he started growing various crops—white maize, sugar beans, and sweet potatoes, among others—for consumption and sale.
“I have always loved agriculture but because of work pressures, I was not practicing. But when I got retrenched from work, I decided to follow my heart and started farming,” he said.
The problem was that every farming season, even with a bumper harvest, Seremwe`s income was falling short. Profits were never enough to feed and care fo…
Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor is a medical doctor, the CEO of EpiAFRIC, Director of Policy and Advocacy for Nigeria Health Watch
ABUJA, Mar 20 2020 (IPS) – Coronavirus is now a pandemic and the World Health Organization considers Europe as its new epicenter. Italy, Spain and France are and several nations are banning travelers from countries where cases are on the rise.
But …