Irfan Shahzad

KARACHI, Nov 2 2007 (IPS) – Access to safe water may be touted as a human right, but inadequate supplies, crumbling water systems and the galloping needs of growing populations are forcing experts, government utilities and funding agencies to ponder over devising sustainable water service networks in Asia s teeming cities.
At least 40 percent of poor people living in urban areas across the Asia-Pacific have no connection to piped water. Despite the region s record rates of economic growth over decades, the biggest challenges for them include the basic need of how to provide their people with sufficient quantities of safe drinking water.

This concern will be among the main areas of focus of a report, called Asian Water and Development Outlook , that the M…

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Nov 30 2007 (IPS) – The United Nations presented the call for nominations for the Red Ribbon Award 2008 to honour community leadership and action against HIV/AIDS in the Mexican capital Friday.
Communities are at the forefront of addressing the core challenges of HIV, said Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Honouring their work and encouraging the replication of community initiatives is essential for a successful global response.

The UNAIDS award, granted every two years, honours 25 outstanding community organisations that demonstrate leadership and action in curtailing the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS in five different categories.

The 25 awardees will each receive a monetar…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 22 2008 (IPS) – The sharp decline in deaths among infants and children worldwide during the past century is one of the great success stories in international public health , the U.N. children #39s agency UNICEF said Tuesday.

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Roger Moore assists with polio immunisation in Elmina, Cape Coast, Ghana. Credit: UNICEF

The annual number of child deaths has been halved, from roughly…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26 2008 (IPS) – The United Nations has launched a multi-year global campaign to intensify its efforts to help eliminate violence against women, which has long remained hidden in a culture of silence .
With this campaign, we are breaking the silence, and ensuring that women s voices are heard, says Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).

We need strong and sustained leadership such as yours, she told Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who shared the podium, to change norms and attitudes. It is time to end complicity and impunity.

The campaign, launched to coincide with the two-week session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) ending Mar. 7, will continue through 2015, the target date …

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Mar 28 2008 (IPS) – Rich countries have made patchy progress in honouring pledges to improve their contribution to the fight against global poverty, according to a new report.
In a declaration agreed at a 2005 international conference in Paris, 35 donor governments and many international agencies gave an undertaking to ensure that their development aid would become more effective. Among the commitments made were that poor countries would take the lead in determining how aid money is used, that aid activities by different governments or agencies would be better coordinated and that the often onerous bureaucratic procedures that recipients have to follow in order to obtain funds would be simplified.

Despite such promises, a report by the European …

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 9 2008 (IPS) – The military government of Burma (Myanmar), in a dramatic turnaround, has offered to cooperate with the United Nations in its massive relief efforts in the cyclone-devastated country where the death toll could exceed 100,000.

The ambassador from Burma joins the U.N. Flash Appeal for cyclone victims on May 9, 2008. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

Our frustration levels ha…

Miriam Mannak

CAPE TOWN, Jun 12 2008 (IPS) – Children who live in communities with an HIV prevalence rate of 10 percent or more have half a year of schooling less than children in other communities.
In this way the negative consequences of HIV/AIDS are felt beyond the families that are directly affected.

These facts were presented at a World Bank conference in South Africa by Robert Greener, senior economic adviser at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Greener was speaking at the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE), which ended in Cape Town yesterday (Jun 11). The theme for this year was People, Politics, and Globalisation . The conference was co-hosted by the South African government s treasury department.

Gre…

Nitin Jugran Bahuguna

NEW DELHI, Jul 17 2008 (IPS) – With unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions continuing to be a serious problem in India, some doctors have begun advocating use of the emergency contraceptive (EC) pill as a possible solution, though conditions in India are regarded far from conducive.

A doctor explains use of the morning after pill . Such services are inaccessible to most Indians. Credit: Nitin …

Interview with Lelio Mármora of the Global AIDS Fund

MEXICO CITY, Aug 8 2008 (IPS) – If the economic status of Latin America and the Caribbean continues to improve, the region s share of assistance from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is likely to drop to half the present level, under the current eligibility requirements, says Lelio Mármora, the Fund s portfolio manager for this region.

Credit: Daniela Estrada/IPS

The alternative is for the countries to improve their epidemiological statistics, design a regional agenda and present proposed modifications of the …

Bill Berkowitz*

OAKLAND, California, Oct 8 2008 (IPS) – As the U.S. presidential race winds down and attack ads against Sen. Barack Obama intensify, Raymond Ruddy, a multi-millionaire conservative Catholic who over the years has been more comfortable operating in the backrooms of conservative philanthropy, appears to be coming out of the closet.
Despite being a longtime contributor to a host of conservative culture war causes often relating to issues involving sexuality Ruddy hasn t made a lot of headlines.

However, his influence extends far beyond Google hits and press coverage. The president of the Boston-based Gerard Health Foundation and the vice chairman of the Board of Directors of Maximus, Inc. the giant services provider that pioneered welfare privatisation ha…