Health : WHO DG-elect faces herculean task on "Health as Rights issue" (PRIV)
(D. Ravi Kanth, Geneva)
As climate change and neo-liberal economic policies wreak havoc by increasing the disease-burden in the poorest and developing countries, the newly-elected director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from Ethiopia, faces a herculean task in advancing his goal that "health is a rights issue" and "an end in itself."

United Nations : Slow growth stalls progress on SDGs (PRIV)
(IPS, New York)
The world will not be on track to eradicate poverty by 2030 if current growth trends continue, a UN task force found.

Africa : More than just conflicts, corruption, disasters (PRIV)
(IPS, Rome)
Natural and man-made disasters, armed conflicts, widespread corruption and deep social inequalities have been so far a dramatic source for most news coverage when it comes to Africa, the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent on Earth, which hosts 54 states spread over 30 million square kilometres that are home to over 1.2 billion people.

Mideast : Growing urbanisation worsens water scarcity, food imports (PRIV)
(IPS, Rome)
Conflict and insecurity remain the key barriers to development progress in the Middle East and North Africa. In Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, about half the population - around 40 million people - require humanitarian assistance. Across the region, countries depend heavily on food imports.

United Nations : Ocean conference - integrated vision that must be delivered (PRIV)
(IPS, New York)
In March 2015 at the Sendai World Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction, the then President of Kirbati, Anote Tong, made it very clear how vulnerable his country was to climate and disaster risk, when he informed the room (which was sadly less than half full) that his country had purchased land in Fiji.

El Salvador : Survivors of El Mozote massacre have new hopes for justice (PRIV)
(IPS, El Mozote)
Except for a house with its walls riddled with holes made by bursts of machine gun fire, nobody would say that the quiet Salvadoran village of El Mozote was the scene of one of the worst massacres in Latin America, just 35 years ago.