Born stateless, this baby acquired nationality in 2008 in Bangladesh. Credit: UNHCR/G.M.B. Akash
ROME, Nov 10 2017 (IPS) – Here’s another ‘unseen’ stark reality—that of millions of people around the world who are deprived of their identity, living without nationality. Their total number is by definition unknown and their only ‘sin” is that they belong to an ethnic, religious or linguistic minority in the country where they have often lived for generations.
These millions of human beings are victims of continued discrimination, exclusion and persecution, states a UN refugee agency’s new report, calling for “immediate action” to secure equal nati…
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 10 2020 (IPS) – COVID-19 has become a scourge affecting all levels of human society – morals, behaviour, human interaction, economy and politics. The pandemic has wrecked havoc on our way of being and its impact will remain huge and all-encompassing. It is not only affecting our globally shared existence, it is also changing what has been called ”the little life”, i.e. our own way of thinking and being, our personal life situation and the one of those close to us; people we love and depend upon – our friends and family.
COVID-19 has so far mainly contaminated humans, though since everything on earth is connected it is a…
The following Oped is part of a series of articles to commemorate World Environment Day June 5
Women and girls, like Susmita who lives in the Sundarbans, West Bengal, spend an estimated 200 million hours a year walking to fetch water, and climate change is making things even worse. Credit: Wateraid/Ranita
LONDON, Jun 1 2021 (IPS) – This year is being described as pivotal for climate change. That’s not only because we’re reaching a point of no return when it comes to the rise in global temperature, it’s because the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties – commonly known as COP26 – is due to take place in November in Glasgow.
COP26 is widely consi…
Members of Africa’s Rural Women’s Assembly are among the farmer and civil society organizations demanding a shift away from Green Revolution programs in the face of rising hunger. Credit: Rural Women’s Assembly
BOSTON, Aug 31 2021 (IPS) – As the United Nations gears up for its Food Systems Summit September 23, the urgent need for structural changes in how we grow, harvest, distribute, and consume food has never been more apparent.
According to the , released July 12, the world experienced a nearly unprecedented one-year rise in severe hunger from 2019 to 2020. The agency’s annual estimate of “undernourishment” showed an increase of up to 25% over 2019…
In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly designated 6 February as the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, with the aim of amplifying and directing the efforts on the elimination of this practice. Credit: UNFPA
NEW YORK, Feb 4 2022 (IPS) – “Multiple overlapping crises are putting millions of girls at increased risk of female genital mutilation. “Countries already grappling with rising poverty, inequality and conflict are seeing the COVID-19 pandemic further threaten years of progress to end the practice, creating a crisis within a …
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jun 18 2020 (IPS) – How often have you heard someone lamenting or even condemning inequality in society, concluding with an appeal to meritocracy? We like to think that if only the deserving, the smart ones, those we deem competent or capable, often meaning the ones who are more like us, were in charge, things would be better, or just fine.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Meritocracy’s appeal
Since the 1960s, many institutions, the world over, have embraced the notion of meritocracy. With post-Cold War neoliberal ideologies enabling growing wealth concentration, the rich, the privileged and their apologists invoke variants of ‘meritocracy’ to legitimize …