The open wounds of the Amazon. Credit:Rolly Valdivia/IPS
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 2014 (IPS) – Indigenous leaders are warning of increased violence in the fight to save their dwindling forests and ecosystems from extractive companies.
Indigenous representatives and environmental activists from Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas met over the weekend here to commemorate those leading community fights against extractive industries. The conference, called Chico Vive, honoured Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber-tapper killed in 1988 for fighting to save the Amazon.“Right now in our territory we can’t drink the water because it’s so contaminated from the hydrocar…
This is the first in a three-part series of about women and Option B+ in Africa
With Option B+, pregnant women are started on lifelong antiretroviral therapy regardless of their CD4 count. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS
NAIROBI, May 26 2014 (IPS) – Kenya’s health sector has been facing significant challenges, ranging from a shortage of health care providers to a series of labour strikes. The problems have not only disrupted health services, but have HIV experts divided on whether to roll out Option B+ nationwide or just to pilot it in high volume facilities such as major referral hospitals.
is the latest treatment option recommended by the World He…
This is part of a series of special stories on world population and challenges to the Sustainable Development Goals on the occasion of World Population Day on July 11.
A basket of condoms is passed around during International Women’s Day in Manila. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 10 2014 (IPS) – As the United Nations continues negotiations on a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for its post-2015 development agenda, population experts are hoping reproductive health will be given significant recognition in the final line-up of the goals later this year.
At the same time, an upcoming Special Session of the General Assembly in mid-Se…
Bonda women in the remote Tulagurum Village in the eastern Indian state of Odisha seldom allow themselves to be photographed. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS
MALKANGIRI, India, Aug 19 2014 (IPS) – Scattered across 31 remote hilltop villages on a mountain range that towers 1,500 to 4,000 feet above sea level, in the Malkangiri district of India’s eastern Odisha state, the Upper Bonda people are considered one of this country’s most ancient tribes, having barely altered their lifestyle in over a thousand years.
Resistant to contact with the outside world and fiercely skeptical of modern development, this community of under 7,000 people is struggling to mai…
A traffic jam in Jaciara, Brazil, caused by repairs to the BR-364 road. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
MONTEVIDEO, Oct 2 2014 (IPS) – “We could be the last Latin American and Caribbean generation living together with hunger.”
The assertion, by Raúl Benítez, a regional officer for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), shows one side of the coin: only 4.6 percent of the region’s population is undernourished, .
By 2030, however, most of the countries in the region will face a serious risk situation due to climate change.
Customary landowners in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, both rainforest nations in the Southwest Pacific Islands, are suffering the environmental and social impacts of illegal logging. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
SYDNEY, Dec 1 2014 (IPS) – Rampant unsustainable logging in the southwest Pacific Island states of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, where the majority of land is covered in tropical rainforest, is worsening hardship, human insecurity and conflict in rural communities.
Paul Pavol, a customary landowner in Pomio District, East New Britain, an island province off the northeast coast of the Papua New Guinean mainland, told IPS that loggi…
Dr. Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the U.N., is co-chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Biological Diversity Beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), along with Dr Liesbeth Lijnzaad of the Netherlands.
An unknown medusa-like plankton viewed from a submersible in the Gulf of Mexico, as part of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration’s Operation Deep Scope 2005. With the increase in the research into and exploitation of marine genetic resources, more and more patents on them are being filed annually.
Credit: Dr. Mikhail Matz/public domain
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 29 2015 (IPS) – After almost 10 years of often frustrating negotiat…
Women in Pakistan fare worse than all their neighbours in terms of resilience to climate change. Credit: Ali Mansoor/IPS
KARACHI, Mar 17 2015 (IPS) – When a group of women in the remote village of Sadhuraks in Pakistan’s Thar Desert, some 800 km from the port city of Karachi, were asked if they would want to be born a woman in their next life, the answer from each was a resounding ‘no’.
They have every reason to be unhappy with their gender, mostly because of the unequal division of labour between men and women in this vast and arid region that forms a natural boundary between India and Pakistan.
“South Asian countries need to realise the tremendous …
NAIROBI, May 2 2015 (IPS) – She is just 14, but Janida avoids eye contact with others, preferring to look down at the ground and nodding her head if someone tries to engage her in conversation.
Janida (not her real name) was once a sociable and playful child, but that was before she was sexually abused by her stepfather and giving birth to a baby who is now four months old.
Her days marked by trauma and depression, Janida is just one of many girl children in Kenya who have been abused and robbed of their childhood, leaving them emotionally scarred.
“The little girl [Janida] underwent both physical and mental torture,” Teresa Omondi, Deputy Executive Director and Head of Programmes at the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Kenya, told IPS. ”Her best option …
Feast or famine: Just three years ago, flooding in Trinidad’s capital of Port of Spain left residents little choice but to wade through the deluge. But lately drought has become a problem in the dry season. Credit: Peter Richards/IPS
PORT OF SPAIN, Jun 23 2015 (IPS) – Starting in 1999, the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) of Trinidad and Tobago began a 10-year effort to map the country’s water quality. They started to notice a worryin…