TORONTO, Canada, Dec 22 2023 (IPS) – The year 2023 has brought so much tragedy, with incomprehensible loss of lives, whether from wars or devastating ‘natural’ disasters, while our planet has seen yet more records broken as our climate catastrophe worsens.

And so as the clock ticks towards the (mostly western) New Year, readers are traditionally subjected by media outlets like ours to the yearender —usually a roundup of main events over the previous 12 months, one horror often overshadowed by the next.

Farhana Haque Rahman

So forgive us if, for 2023, IPS takes a somewhat different approach, highlighting how humanity can do better and how the big depressing pi…

Yvonne Pinto, the incoming Director General of the International Rice Research Institute, at the 5th All Africa Horticulture Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, February 26 to March 1, 2024.
Credit: Supplied by Yvonne Pinto

SYDNEY, Feb 28 2024 (IPS) – Growing up on a small farming station in Holetta (Ethiopia), Yvonne Pinto would accompany her agriculturist father to the farm, where she would spend her time cross-fertilizing plants. Her tiny fingers…

The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons

Since the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan in 2021, numerous women grapple with profound mental health challenges, often in silence, fearing repercussions for speaking out. Credit: Learning Together

May 16 2024 (IPS) – Afghanistan is grappling with a growing crisis of mental illness, particularly among its women, a…

The acute shortage of qualified mental health specialists in West Africa is a major obstacle to tackling mental health issues in the region. Credit Credit: Unsplash /Melanie Wasser

NAIROBI, Jul 24 2024 (IPS) – Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, people in the African region were living with mental health conditions. A large proportion of mental dis…