Delegates at the Youth Empowerment: Education, Employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights forum held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. Credit: APDA
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 8 2023 (IPS) – With more than 600 million youth aged between 18 and 24 in the Asia and Pacific region, putting their issues front and center is crucial. Speakers at a recent forum, Youth Empowerment: Education, Employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of …
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 30 2022 (IPS) – Asia and the Pacific is the most digitally divided region of the world, and South-East Asia is the most divided subregion. The Covid-19 pandemic detonated a “digital big bang” that spurred people, governments and businesses to become “digital by default;” a sea change that generated vast digital dividends. These benefits that have not been distributed equally, however. New development gaps have emerged as digital transformation reinforces a vicious cycle of socioeconomic inequalities, within and across countries.
Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
Bridging these divides and ensuring advances in technology can benefit…
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.
Sep 9 2020 (IPS) – Once safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are available, tough choices will need to be made about who gets the first shots.
A committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine – at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health – has proposed an .
They recommend first responders and health care workers take top priority. Older adults in congregate living situations would also be part of a firs…
Credit: UNICEF/Nahom Tesfaye
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Feb 3 2021 (IPS) – Access to COVID-19 vaccines for many developing countries and most of their people will have to wait as the powerful and better off secure earlier access regardless of need or urgency. More profits, by manufacturing scarcity, will surely cause even more loss of both lives and livelihoods.
Good intentions not enough
To induce private efforts to develop and distribute vaccines, the WHO initiated to ensure more equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. However, interest by vaccine companies has been limited, while some governments – especially from better-off upper middle-income countries – p…
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern. Credit: Pictures in montage ©United Nations
DOMINICA, Sep 22 2021 (IPS) – On September 20, Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina accepted an award from the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network for her country’s ‘striking’ progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
That progress includes an adult literacy rate that jumped from 21 percent in 1981 to 75 percent in 2019 and a spike in access to electricity from 14 percent in 1991 to 92 percent today. The country has also dras…