Population

International Women’s Day, 2023
The Power of Technology—& the Increased Exclusion, Inequalities & Gender Discrimination

By Achim Steiner
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tremendous power of technology and innovation has become clear to the world. However, it has also increased exclusion, discrimination, and inequalities -- especially for women and girls.

International Women’s Day, 2023
Promoting Gender Equality and Closing the Digital Divide

By Mercy Erhi Makpor
The accelerating pace of digitalization has ushered humanity into a whole different era of information and communication. Today, digitalization permeates every aspect of our lives, socio-economically and politically.

International Women’s Day, 2023
Her Land, Her Rights: Advancing Gender Equality & Land Restoration Goals

By Andrea Meza
When it comes to land, gender inequalities are pervasive. Today, nearly half of the global agricultural workforce is female – yet less than one in five landholders worldwide are women 1.  

International Women’s Day, 2023
To Strengthen Women’s Resilience to Disasters, Make Wealthiest Pay Their Fair Share

By Magdalena Sepúlveda
She will be called Aya. This is the name that nurses gave to the infant baby pulled from the rubble of a five-story building in Jinderis, northern Syria. A miracle. Beside her, the rescuers found her mother, dead.

International Women’s Day, 2023
A New Global Architecture to Defend & Promote Rights of Women & Girls

By Simone Galimberti
If you want to have a good reading on women and young girls’ activism, there is a high chance that you have missed an incredibly interesting report.

Rising Food Prices, Ongoing Energy Crisis Place South Africa at Risk

By Lyse Comins
South Africa’s almost record level food price inflation, load shedding, rising energy costs, and further fuel and interest rate hike forecast have eroded workers’ disposable incomes and further disadvantaging the poor – leaving analysts predicting that the country was at heightened risk, including civil unrest.

International Women’s Day, 2023
Unleashing Our Region’s Most Untapped Potential: Harnessing the Digital Age to Empower Women & Girls

By Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
New technologies and innovations are reshaping our world and its future, often at a dizzying pace. Yet women and girls continue to be left behind in this burgeoning digital universe. How, then, can we harness these developments to create a better future for all of us?

Venezuela Drafts Legal Stranglehold on NGOs

By Humberto Márquez
The Venezuelan parliament, in the hands of the ruling party, is moving towards passing a law to control non-governmental organizations (NGOs) so that, in practice, they could not exist independently.

BRAC ‘Resets’ Program Aimed at Empowering Adolescent Girls in Africa

By Naureen Hossain
BRAC’s Empowerment and Livelihood Program (ELA) has benefitted tens of thousands of girls, and its recently released report shows an organization willing to adapt to the circumstances to continue to ensure adolescent girls and young women receive meaningful sexual and reproductive health rights support.

Pakistan’s Free Healthcare Insurance Benefits Women, Poor

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
A free health insurance initiative started in Pakistan has benefited poor patients, especially women who have outnumbered men in using the cashless health services under the Sehat Card Plus programme. "The initiative is in line with the ICPD25 Programme of Action, under which 4.5 million people have received free services, with 62 percent of them women. In the last three years, we have been able to cut down maternal mortality rate from 186 deaths per 100,000 live births to 172," Dr Muhammad Riaz Tanoli, CEO of the Sehat Card Plus (SCP), told IPS.

A Vital Partnership for the 2030 Agenda

By Ulrika Modéer and Steve Utterwulghe
Flexible and predictable funding allows UN agencies to respond promptly and with agility in times of crisis. In countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen, and Ukraine, UNDP implements projects and programmes that help protect livelihoods and enhance the resilience of vulnerable communities.

Fear of Population Ageing

By Joseph Chamie
Fear of population ageing is all over the news media and in government offices of country capitals worldwide. Planet Earth is becoming “planet ageing”.

Privilege and Centralism in Lima Goad Protesters in Peru

By Mariela Jara
The current political and social upheaval in Peru is not a temporary problem, but has to do with deeply-rooted inequality and social hierarchies, according to historian José Carlos Agüero.

Bhutan’s Civil Servants are Building a Digital Government System — Here’s How

By Amy Shelver and Ian Richards
New UNCTAD software does to digital government what IKEA did to furniture, allowing Bhutan’s government employees to create their own user-friendly services for citizens online.

In Latin America’s Aging Population, 17 Percent Will Be Over 65 by 2050

By Mariela Jara
Latin America and the Caribbean is no longer a young region and it will be one of the regions with the largest aging populations by 2050, which poses great challenges due to the social inequalities the countries face, but also opportunities to overcome them.

Population Decline Hysteria & More Ponzi Demography

By Joseph Chamie
China’s announcement on 17 January 2023 that its population had declined for the first time in 60 years has fostered population decline hysteria and promoted more Ponzi demography in many parts of the world.

Demography Doesn’t Care

By Joseph Chamie
Demography doesn’t care about such things as national strikes over pension retirement ages, public protests about contraception and abortion rights, sexual orientation, habits and preferences, political ideology and party affiliation, dress codes and head coverings, and religious identity, beliefs and practices.

Africa’s Maternal Deaths Need Urgent Action to Meet SDG Goals

By Francis Kokutse
As the effects of COVID-19 on Africa’s health sector become clearer, it looks the continent will need to take urgent steps to overcome the disruptions suffered in the breakdown in antenatal and postnatal care for women and newborns and neonatal intensive care units. The pandemic brought some setbacks to the gains achieved in maternal mortality over the past decade.

Digitizing Africa: Key to Stronger Institutions

By Kavazeua Katjomuise
I recently overheard a conversation among three young people at a café in an African city. It was a passionate discussion on the management of funds allocated to the COVID-19 response and the effectiveness of the mechanisms in place to manage the money to achieve the intended purposes.

Raising Retirement Age Coming Soon

By Joseph Chamie
Despite the objections, resistance and protests taking place in many countries around the world, raising the official retirement age to receive government provided pension benefits is coming soon.

The Digital Divide: Africa the Least Connected with 60 percent of the Population Offline

By Thalif Deen
The digital divide – between the world’s rich and poor nations —remains staggeringly wide. For over 2.7 billion people, many of them living in developing and least developed countries (LDCs), meaningful connectivity remains elusive, according to a UN report released during the 17th Internet Governance Forum in Addis Ababa, last month.
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