Inter Press Service | News and Views from the Global South

Inter Press Service | News and Views from the Global South

Does Africa’s Food Future Really Lie with Young Farmers? Busani Bafana Africa will starve or survive on expensive food imports because it is not growing new farmers, research shows. And the challenge remains among researchers, policy makers, public and private sector actors to get African youth interested in agriculture on a continent where a growing number of people ... MORE > >

Can UN Development Be Reformed? Not at This Rate Stephen Browne Like his predecessors, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has been pushing a reform program to help the organization adjust to the demands of contemporary global governance. Over nearly 75 years, the UN has innovated and adapted. At first, humanitarian assistance was not ... MORE > >

Australia's Bushfires Bring Mounting Pressure to Reduce Greenhouse Gases Neena Bhandari As nature's fury wreaked havoc across Australia, reducing to ashes all that came in its way - people, flora, fauna, picturesque historic towns and villages once popular with local and overseas tourists – it was unlike anything the country had witnessed before. The staggering scale and intensity of ... MORE > >

Billionaires Beware Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram The latest November 2019 UBS/PwC Billionaires Report counted 2,101 billionaires globally, or 589 more than five years before. Earlier, Farhad Manjoo had seriously recommended, ‘Abolish Billionaires’, presenting a moral case against the super-rich as they have and get far, far more than what they ... MORE > >

How Gender-based Violence Should be Reported in the Media Sexual and gender-based violence terrorizes women and girls around the world, affecting as many as one in three women. Reporters play an essential role in bringing these cases to light so that authorities can take action and prevent further abuses. Yet reporting on gender-based violence comes with ... MORE > >

Not all Trade is Good – the Case of Plastics Waste Alexey Kravchenko Currently, approximately 300 million tons of oil-based plastic waste are produced every year. A significant amount of plastic waste ends up in the oceans, having a detrimental effect on marine ecosystems and coastal communities. Most of this waste originates from the Asia-Pacific region. If ... MORE > >

India’s Citizenship Law Triggered by Rising Right-Wing Ideology Nadia Kanji “Fire bullets at the traitors of the country,” chanted mobs of Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, supporters wrapped in Indian flags in Delhi last week. It’s been less than a month since protests emerged against the BJP’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a new law to redefine and restrict who is ... MORE > >

2020: a Year Full of Danger Farhana Haque Rahman Let’s face what lies ahead with open eyes: 2020 is going to be a very tough year for the world, and developing countries in particular. The infant decade has already begun with the harbingers of climate disaster as thousands fled to beaches in Australia from raging bush fires, and the Middle East ... MORE > >

Reflections for a New Year Roberto Savio In a world shaken by so many problems, it is difficult to look at 2020 and not make some kind of holistic analysis. While enormous progress has been made on many fronts, it is clear that the tide has turned, and we are now entering – or have already entered – a new low point in the history of ... MORE > >

Child Marriages Unlikely to End by UN’s 2030 Deadline Nayema Nusrat “Right now, I don’t want to get married. I have a long life and a dream in front of me”, a 14-year-old young girl from Bangladesh told her parents as she was just not ready to get married. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 5.3) has targeted to end child marriage by 2030. According to ... MORE > >

In Mauritania, Imams take to Radio Waves to say Child Marriage is Against Islam "I refused to marry off my daughter for a simple, good reason: I want my daughter to be empowered,” said Lemeima mint El Hadrami, 49. "I don't want her to go through the same difficulties I did when I was young." El Hadrami was married when she was only 13. As is often the case for child ... MORE > >