A Step Towards the Light: Ending Human Trafficking

Children from rural areas and disempowered homes are ideal targets for trafficking in India and elsewhere. Credit: Neeta Lal / IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21 2018 (IPS) – A new initiative aims to use data to shed light on a pervasive multi-billion dollar criminal industry: human trafficking.

Created by the International Organization for Migration and Polaris, the Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative (CTDC) is the world’s first human trafficking data portal.

It collects data from various counter-trafficking organizations around the world in order to help stakeholders identify and respond to trends.

“We are really just starting to see the b…

Agricultural Trade Liberalization Undermined Food Security

Agricultural Trade Liberalization Undermined Food Security - Africa has been transformed from a net food exporter into a net food importer, while realizing only a small fraction of its vast agricultural potential. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Africa has been transformed from a net food exporter into a net food importer, while realizing only a small fraction of its vast agricultural potential. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

KUALA LUMPUR AND SYDNEY, May 21 2018 (IPS) – Agriculture is critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the Food and Agriculture Organization () notes, ‘From ending poverty and hunger to responding to climate change and sustaining our natural re…

How the Lack of Affordable Vegetables is Creating a Billion-Dollar Obesity Epidemic in South Africa

The number of young South Africans suffering from obesity doubled in the last six years, while it had taken the United States 13 years for this to happen.

Fruit and vegetable prices in South Africa have increased to the point that poorer people have had to remove them from their grocery lists. Credit: Nalisha Adams/IPS

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 10 2018 (IPS) – Every Sunday afternoon, Thembi Majola* cooks a meal of chicken and rice for her mother and herself in their home in Alexandra, an informal settlement adjacent to South Africa’s wealthy economic hub, Sandton.

“Vegetables is only on Sunday,” Majola tells IPS, adding that these constitute potatoes, sweet potato and pum…

Italy Has the ‘Greenest Agriculture’ in Europe, But it’s Not Sustainable

The New Agriculture Cooperative was founded in 1977 by a group of young unemployed, labourers and farmers with two main objectives: create employment in agriculture and prevent the construction of a vast area of high environmental value. In 1990 the conversion to organic farming began, followed in 1996 by the conversion of livestocks. In 2010 the Cooperative moved to biodynamic agriculture. Credit: Maged Srour/IPS

ROME, Dec 23 2018 (IPS) – While Italian agriculture is in a leading position in terms of organic farming, sustainable agriculture and being at the forefront of biodiversity conservation; water scarcity, illegal workers and the role of women and combined ageing of…

Greater Skills Equals Greater Ability to Combat Leprosy

Dr Ken Jetton (left) and Dr Arturo Cunanan (centre) with a patient who has been cured of leprosy in the Majuro leprosy clinic in the capital of the Marshall Islands. The patient is now seeking further help due to post-treatment complexities. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

MAJURO, Apr 4 2019 (IPS) – It’s a Friday morning and Dr. Ken Jetton, the only doctor who treats leprosy in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, is seeing a patient recently cured of the disease.
David, 32, has received multidrug therapy (MDT) treatment for a year already. But he is back in the doctor’s office because of a reversal reaction that has occurred.
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Civil Society Urges Inclusive, Resilient & Sustainable Urban Areas of the Future

Cristina Fan is Coordinator, World Development Foundation

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, USA, Sep 9 2019 (IPS) – The United Nations held its first major international conference in one of America’s mountain states, bringing scores of civil society organizations (CSOs) to discuss ways on making “cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable by 2030.”

The annual UN Civil Society Conference, which had been meeting mostly in New York, site of the UN world headquarters, and in some foreign capitals, was hosted by Salt Lake City’s Mayor’s office August 26-28 under the title “Building Inclusive and sustainable cities and communit…

Call to Action as Thousands Breathe New Life to the Cairo Promise at ICPD 25 Summit in Nairobi This Week

Gender equality and women empowerment at the heart of ICPD25. Credit: Joyce Chimbi / IPS

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 11 2019 (IPS) – Every day 830 women die while giving life. At least 33,000 girls are forced into child marriage with 11,000 girls undergoing female genital mutilation. These are some of the cruel realities young women face every day. However, there is renewed hope that delegates expected to attend the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Nairobi this week will re-energise and breathe new life to the Cairo Promise.

“The Summit is a call to action to accelerate progress towards the world we imagined in 1994,” Arthur Er…

2020: a Year Full of Danger

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Protesters demonstrate against direction taken by climate change talks. Credit: Ana Libisch/IPS

ROME, Jan 6 2020 (IPS) – Let’s face what lies ahead with open eyes: 2020 is going to be a very tough year for the world, and developing countries in particular. The infant decade has already begun with the harbingers of climate disaster as thousands fled to beaches in Australia from raging bush fire…

Why Rich Countries must Protect Developing Nations from Coronavirus Pandemic

This playground just outside the Slovak capital, Bratislava, has been sealed off to stop people spreading the virus. Similar measures are in place in cities and towns across Europe, which is now the epicentre of the virus’s spread. Credit: Ed Holt/IPS

BRASTISLAVA , Mar 16 2020 (IPS) – Governments in wealthy, first world countries must not ignore the plight of poorer nations battling the coronavirus or the disease will not be brought under control, global development experts have said.

As African nations slowly report growing numbers of cases, and more and more infections are registered in countries with endemic poverty on other continents, there are growing fears that…

U.N. Releases Report on Socio-economic Effects of Coronavirus

A United Nations report states that the fact that women make up 70 percent of the global health workforce puts them at greater risk of infection.
This is a dated photo of Catherine a nurse at Jinja referral hospital,in Uganda. Credit: Lyndal Rowlands/IPS.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 3 2020 (IPS) – As the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow, concerns are simultaneously growing about the current and long-term effects this will have on certain demographics specifically, women, the youth, migrant workers, and many employees around the world. 

This week, the United Nations launched a report “” that detailed how these communities are affected dispropo…