The 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women ended in mid-March more with a sigh of relief than with jubilation. The commission, comprising 45 national delegations, managed to reach a final agreement (which it could not do last year) without losing ground on women’s rights that had been gained, at [...]
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LA DALIA, Nicaragua — Things are getting steamy between two cartoon characters kissing each other on the big white screen. The boy wants to have sex without a condom; the girl is worried he will walk out on her if she says no. Finally, she gives in but soon after finds herself pregnant. Raging with [...]
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RIO GRANDE, Puerto Rico — The line used to be clearer between rich and poorer nations when discussions turned to a country’s ideal population size. In the industrial global north and the tiger economies of East Asia, family sizes shrank steadily over decades and economies grew. Small was good. In poorer countries, fertility often remained [...]
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The New Year began with a big step for Saudi women when King Abdullah appointed 30 of them to the kingdom’s traditionally all-male Shura Council, an advisory body that serves as a pale imitation of a legislature in the kingdom, which has no parliament. One of the new advisers is Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the former [...]
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The clamor for United Nations reform has not stopped since its first days in 1945. Although ideas for changing the UN rise and fall each year, the newest calls for an overhaul involve development, one of the largest sectors of the world body’s system. With a Kafkaesque bureaucracy consisting of at least 30 agencies and [...]
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Every once in a while an event takes place in relative obscurity that nonetheless holds the potential to change the world. That is not a small statement, but it may prove applicable in coming years to the family planning summit in London on July 11. Dozens of governments, United Nations agencies, foundations, research institutions, the [...]
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To reflect its growing global reach, the independent citizen-support group in the United States for the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, has changed its name from Americans for UNFPA to Friends of UNFPA. The group is one of numerous public American organizations supporting a range of UN agencies. The Population Fund is the world’s largest [...]
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In his recently released 2013 budget proposal, President Obama has increased funds for foreign aid to the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development, but the 1.2 percent rise over 2012 figures is still less than 1 percent of the entire federal budget. The total amount proposed for foreign aid is $51.6 [...]
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The world may look more diverse than ever as it hits the seven billion population mark, though scratch below the teeming surface and you discover similarities in rich and poor countries alike. Problems of urban density, youth unemployment, elderly care and scarcer resources are shared across all economic and regional spectrum. By interviewing people in [...]
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