By Jaya Ramachandran GENEVA, 4 March 2023 (IDN) — Multiple crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, growing inequalities, rising debt burdens and economic shocks are strongly affecting world’s 46 Least Developed Countries (LDCs). They face the challenge of high debt costs because they do not have sufficient cash to provide essential services. In the […]
Energy Poverty Grips Southern Africa
By Jeffrey Moyo CAPETOWN, South Africa, 01 March 2023 (IDN) — Thirty-seven-year-old Lwandile Zwane of Khayelitsha and her two daughters have their super by 4 pm to beat the six-hour electricity outage across Capetown. Characterized by slum settlements, Khayelitsha is a township in South Africa’s Cape Town where power outages have not spared many poor […]
Twin Challenges of Climate Change and Debt Crises Confront Banga at World Bank
By Arul Louis The writer is a New York-based non-resident senior fellow of the Society for Policy Studies, a New Delhi-based think tank. He can be contacted @arulouis. UNITED NATIONS, 26 Feb 2023 (IDN) — US President Joe Biden has nominated Ajay Banga to head the World Bank with a mandate to promote climate change […]
UN Celebrates the World’s Rich ‘Linguistic Tapestry’
A UN News Special UNITED NATIONS, 25 Feb 2023 (IDN) — Multilingual education is a critical key to razing inequalities and promoting human rights for all, UN officials said to mark International Mother Language Day. Commemorating the world’s languages—all 6,700 of them—since 1999, the 21 February aims at celebrating ways of showcasing the world’s linguistic […]
Universities Step Up Focus on SDGs in Post-Pandemic Revival
By Kalinga Seneviratne SYDNEY, 16 Feb 2023 (IDN) — Universities are sometimes seen as ivory towers aloft from the communities they are supposed to serve. But, in reviving a sector that was badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, universities are now taking the lead in working with the communities to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable […]
African Leaders Launch Equality Drive at Landmark Conference
By UN News JUBA, South Sudan 14 Feb 2023 (IDN) — Women leaders called for swift, concerted action to advance gender rights at the first International Conference on Women’s Transformational Leadership, in Juba, South Sudan. Almost 400 women leaders from 15 African countries joined the UN-backed three-day conference, which opened on February 1, including former […]
Latin America & the Caribbean Lack Access to Healthy Diet
By Rodrigo Pérez SANTIAGO, Chile (IDN) — As many as 131.3 million in Latin America and the Caribbean have had to forego nutritious foods in 2020 because of the higher average daily cost of healthy diets in the region compared to those in other areas of the world. According to the new United Nations report […]
Of Love, Of Selfishness and a World
By Ramu Damodaran The author is the first Director of UN Academic Impact and a Senior Fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). NEW YORK (IDN) — It was in the final weeks of 2020, during the annually familiar, even at times festive, reaffirmation and celebration of faith, from Eid-e-Milad […]
African Leaders Unite in Pledge to End AIDS In Children
By Jamshed Baruah GENEVA (IDN) — Every five minutes, a child dies from AIDS-related causes. While three-quarters of adults (76 per cent) are on life-saving treatment, only half (52 per cent) of children living with HIV are receiving antiretrovirals. Despite the fact that only 4 per cent of the total number of people living with […]
In Focus: Gender Empowerment and the SDGs
By Kalinga Seneviratne SYDNEY (IDN) — The latest available Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 data shows that the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. It will take perhaps another three centuries to close the global gender gap. Almost 1 in 3 women have experienced physical or sexual violence at least […]