COMILLA, Bangladesh , Aug 23 2013 (IPS) – Seven months pregnant, 24-year-old Shumi Begum has travelled 220 km from her village with her paternal grandmother to consult a specialist on childbirth.
“We seek treatment here because of the good reputation of the service providers. We have had childbirth in our family in the hands of the same service providers here and for safety reasons I think this centre is still the best choice,” Shumi’s grandmother Hosne-Ara told IPS.
She was waiting at a community maternity centre here in Jafargonj in Comilla district, about 55 km from capital Dhaka.
At the crowded two-storey maternity centre popularly known as Mayer Hashi (smiling mother), a project supervised by EngenderHealth and funded by USAID, Shumi anxiously looks at…
A food garden at UN headquarters in New York City. Credit: Phillip Kaeding / IPS.
NEW YORK, Jul 11 2016 (IPS) – Habitat III, the UN’s conference on cities this coming October will explore urban agriculture as a solution to food security, but here in New York City, it has shown potential for much more.
Record-high levels of inequality are being felt most prominently in the world’s cities. Even In New York City, the heart of the developed world, many urban communities have food security issues.
Since the year 2000, New York City food costs have increased by 59 percent, while the average income of working adults has only increased by 17 percent.
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Elizabeth Campbell is Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees’ Representative Office in Washington, D.C.
Displaced children in a UN-run school in the Shujaiyeh neighbourhood of Gaza.Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 9 2018 (IPS) – As people across the globe marked International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8, the safe and secure education and possibilities for the future of millions of young girls and women who are Palestinian refugees across the Middle East remained in danger.
Unfortunately, a recent decision by the United States to significantly reduce expected financial support to the (UNRWA), has put at …
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 2019 (IPS) – The widespread innovations in modern digital technology have a devastating downside to it: the accumulation of over 50 million tonnes of electronics waste (e-waste) globally every year.
And that’s greater in weight than all of the world’s commercial airliners ever made, or enough Eiffel Towers to fill the borough of Manhattan in New York city, warns a new report released at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, January 24.
Currently only 20% of e-waste—including desktop computers, cell phones, laptops, television sets, printers and a wide variety of household electrical appliances is formally recycled.
If noth…