is the UNFPA Representative to Kenya and the United Nations Resident Coordinator ad interim.

“An MSF assisted cholera treatment center in Mandera, Kenya”. June 03, 2016 – Photo credit : @unfpaken

Mandera County, Kenya, Jun 5 2016 (IPS) – Mandera’s double whammy, the concurrent outbreaks of cholera and chikungunya, is bringing to the fore the need for accelerated epidemic preparedness and prevention systems.

is an acute diarrhoeal disease that can kill within hours if left untreated.

virus is most often spread to people by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes. These are the same mosquitoes that transmit dengue, yellow fever and zika virus. Its symptoms include high fever, joint pain, rash and headache. There is no vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat chikungunya virus infection.

The twin epidemics have hit the expansive north-eas…

Nearly half the children in drought-stricken South Madagascar are malnourished. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

AMBOVOMBE, Madagascar, Jul 8 2016 (IPS) – Voahevetse Fotetse can easily pass for a three-year-old even though he is six and a pupil at Ankilimafaitsy Primary School in Ambovombe district, Androy region, one of the most severely affected by the ongoing drought in the South of Madagascar.

“Fotetse is just like many of the pupils here who, due to chronic malnutrition, are much too small for their age, they are too short and too thin,” explains Seraphine Sasara, the school’s director.

The school has a total population of 348 72 boys and 276 girls and they range from three to 15 years. Fewer boys stay in school as they spend most of the…

This article is part of a series of stories and op-eds issued by IPS on the occasion of this year’s World Autism Awareness Day

BLANTYRE, Malawi, Mar 29 2017 (IPS) – When building a house, it’s critical to lay a strong foundation. The same applies to education, with studies showing that children who attend early learning centers perform better in school than those who do not.

In Malawi, a 2003 national survey found that only 18.8 percent of school-age children with disabilities were attending class. More than twice as many of the same age group without disabilities (41.1 percent) attended school. This was mainly attributed to the lack of a disability-friendly environment.”Since many children come from poor families, parents are often faced with the dilemma of choosing which child to send to secondary school, bearing in mind that the one with difficulties needs special care.” –teacher Miriam Chimtengo

More parents are now sending their young ones to such…

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 8 2017 (IPS) – While stories of child marriage are commonly associated with the Global South, lesser known are the cases closer to home: in the United States.

Across the world, child marriage has persisted and the United States is no exception. Across all 50 states in the North American nation, marriage before the age of 18 has remained legal.

“These are old laws that were just never changed because people didn’t realize this was happening,” said Fraidy Reiss, the Executive Director of Unchained at Last, an organization fighting to end child marriage in the U.S.

Based on available data, Unchained at Last that over quarter of a million children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. Data shows girls as young as 12 years old married in states like Alaska, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

The Tahirih Justice Center, which helps protect women and girls from gender-based violence, that Texas has the second highest rates …

Members of Zimbabwe’s Khoisan tribe perform a traditional dance during an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign conducted by Tsoro-O-Tso San, a development trust that aids the tribe. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

TSHOLOTSHO, Zimbabwe, Aug 31 2017 (IPS) – Sixty-seven-year-old Hloniphani Sidingo gives a broad smile while popping out through the gate of a clinic in her village, as she heads home clutching containers of anti-retroviral pills.

The first Bantu people to dwell in present-day Zimbabwe, the Khoisan, also known as the Bushmen or Basagwa, populate remote areas of southern Africa, particularly Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Here, the Khoisan community is found in Matabeleland North’s Tsholotsho district, where many like Sidingo are domiciled. Other Khoisans live in Plumtree in this country’s Matabeleland South pr…

Close-up of a woman hands hold and broke a cigarette. Credit: Bigstock

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 2017 (IPS) – Back in November 2008, the 193-member General Assembly decided, by consensus, to ban smoking and tobacco sales at the UN headquarters in New York: a ruling observed by all affiliated agencies worldwide, including the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) which has severed links with the tobacco industry.

But there still remains one holdout: the 187-member International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva whose Governing Body, which meets three times a year, has postponed once again its decision on whether or not to cut ILO’s ties with the tobacco industry.

The executive body’s deliberations remained deadlocked at a meeting in early November resulting in a second postponement of a decision to sever ties with an industry, whose products are …

Former “Blood Diamonds” now Provide Employment. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/ IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 2018 (IPS) – How many people know where their gold and diamond jewelry comes from?

How many people consider the human cost of its production?

Not many consumers ask these questions, and, shockingly, neither do many of the world’s leading jewelry brands.

It’s a trend that Human Rights Watch (HRW) is trying to change with a new social media campaign, #BehindTheBling.

“We want people to think about where their jewelry comes from,” Jo Becker, Advocacy Director of the Children’s Rights Division at HRW, told IPS.

“Importantly, we want people to tell the brands that. We want them to write, to tweet, to call the big companies to put pressure on them to guarantee that their gold and diamonds are not coming from places that are c…

Danielle Nierenberg is Founder and President of . Emily Payne is a food and agriculture writer based in New York

Credit: Bigstock

NEW ORLEANS, United States, May 29 2018 (IPS) – Many factors contribute to the cost of a tomato. For example, what inputs were used (water, soil, fertilizer, pesticides, as well as machinery and/or labor) to grow it? What kind of energy and materials were used to process and package it? Or how much did transportation cost to get it to the shelf?

But that price doesn’t always reflect how the plant was grown—overuse and misuse of antibiotics, water pollution from pesticide runoff, or whether or not farm workers harvesting the tomatoes were paid a fair wage. It turns out cheap food often comes with an enormously expensive cost to human and planetary health.

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