Development

• December 6, 2016

It is not only “glass ceilings” limiting women’s career progress but also “glass floors” and “glass walls” blocking gender equality in the workplace. These hurdles actually limit the entry and mobility of both women and men in predominately gender-defined jobs. If women are to achieve gender equality with men at high levels in the …

Development, Gender Violence, Human Rights, Women

Leave a Comment

TOPIC: WOMEN

This Entrepreneur Shows Kenyans That Women Can Prosper in Business

Elizabeth Walsh

• November 16, 2016

Jennifer Riria, the chief executive of Kenya’s largest microfinance institution, grew up in a village at the top of Mount Kenya, the second-tallest mountain in Africa. Her birth was cause for disappointment: the fourth of her parents’ daughters. Her father abused her mother, and she grew up watching women carry firewood, water, food and …

Africa, Development, Women

Leave a Comment

In Hanoi, Families Finance Vietnam’s Entrepreneurial Women

Michaela Walsh

• August 1, 2016

HANOI — Michaela Walsh, a founder and the first president and chief executive of Women’s World Banking, and Lilia Clemente, the founder of Clemente Capital, an early investor in developing nations, went to Vietnam in early June to meet women and observe how they fared with their street carts, market stalls and shops under …

Asia, Development, Poverty, SDGs, Women

Leave a Comment

Ruth Messinger: A ‘Global Ambassador’ Pushing for Women’s Progress

Barbara Crossette

• July 20, 2016

In the political annals of New York, the 1990s boasted a strong presence of women not only in government but also at the United Nations. One such woman, Ruth Messinger, served as Manhattan borough president from 1990 to 1998, with time out in 1997 to run for mayor of New York City on the …

Development, Gender Violence, SDGs, Women

Leave a Comment

The UN’s First Feminist, Peg Snyder, Describes Her Brilliant Career

Barbara Crossette

• March 22, 2016

As the Commission on the Status of Women convenes to tackle 21st-century feminist issues, Margaret Snyder — “Peg” to almost everyone who has met her — can take a long view of the history of women in the United Nations system, the hurdles they overcame and the changes they have made. Best known as the …

Africa, Development, Women

Leave a Comment

The European Migrant Crisis: Can Development Agencies Do Better?

Nicholas Micinski and Thomas G. Weiss

• February 4, 2016

The unprecedented influx of refugees and migrants to Europe has increased the visibility of the longstanding nexus of migration, development and security. The emphasis on terrorism and national security is understandable but myopic if the essential benefits of migration and development are to be realized. The United Nations will host three key meetings on …

Development, SDGs

Leave a Comment

As Conditions Worsen in Humanitarian Crises, Aid Workers Also Feel the Pain

Barbara Crossette

• January 26, 2016

The images of refugees washing up, living or dying, on the southern shores of Europe leave no humanitarians unmoved. Behind those images and others from Asia, Africa and Latin America are scores of mostly unseen relief and aid workers whose efforts to meet crises are being squeezed to the point of triage. Militants have …

Development, Humanitarian Aid

Leave a Comment

All in Africa: The World’s 13 Highest-Mortality Countries

Joseph Chamie

• January 6, 2016

Despite remarkable reductions in mortality, 13 sub-Saharan African countries — 1 out of every 20 people in the world — have yet to achieve life expectancies at birth of 55 years, the global average attained a half century ago. These highest-mortality countries, with Somalia leading the list, are more than 15 years behind the …

Africa, Development, Health and Population, Poverty, SDGs, Women

One Comment

A Monastery’s Farm in Burkina Faso Feels the Impacts of Climate Change

Dulcie Leimbach

• December 5, 2015

KOUBRI, Burkina Faso — More than 2,500 miles away from this village, world leaders met recently in Paris to try to save the earth from severe climate change and its deadly effects. Here in West Africa, people in rural communities scrape together livelihoods in a region that is extra-vulnerable to drought and hunger, problems …

Africa, Climate Change, Development, Health and Population

Leave a Comment

A New UN Nutrition Program Financed by Africans for Africans

Tendai Musakwa

• November 10, 2015

The first United Nations development aid program financed solely by African countries for their own benefit was announced recently at the UN headquarters in New York. Unitlife, which was presented as world leaders convened at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, will tax the sale of oil, gold and other natural resources …

Africa, Development, Education, Health and Population, Women

One Comment

Can the UN’s SDGs Live Up to the Hype?

Barbara Crossette

• October 10, 2015

When the United Nations’ member states gave final approval at a special General Assembly session on Sept. 25 to the new global development policy, they were making a commitment to the most wide-ranging and ambitious plan ever attempted by the organization. Now the hard part begins as experts struggle to decide how to measure …

Development, SDGs

Leave a Comment

The Heart of Pope Francis’s Speech at the UN: Don’t Look Past the Poor

Dulcie Leimbach

• September 25, 2015

Pope Francis spread his gospel of not forgetting the poor at the United Nations on Friday morning, where he spoke in his native Spanish to the 193 member delegations and heads of state gathered before him at the General Assembly Hall. It was his first appearance at the UN during his first trip to …

Development, General Assembly, Poverty, SDGs, Secretary-General, Women

2 Comments

Rights of Girls, a Politically Loaded Issue, May Sink in the New UN Development Goals

Barbara Crossette

• September 8, 2015

When member countries of the United Nations agreed to the Millennium Development Goals 15 years ago, advocates for stronger rights for women and girls were disappointed as governments (and the Vatican) balked at reasserting the bold promises of the international conferences of the 1990s in Cairo and in Beijing. Later campaigns, inside and outside …

Development, Education, SDGs

Leave a Comment

The Sustainable Development Goals May Be in Place, but Dissent Was Apparent

Bill Orme

• June 14, 2015

It’s all over but the shouting. But the shouting is still loud, and it’s mostly about the indicators. And the indicators, ultimately, may be all that matters about the United Nations’ new Sustainable Development Goals. After more than two years of complex, contentious negotiations, the essential content and most of the actual text of …

Development, General Assembly, SDGs

Leave a Comment

No Room for LGBT Rights in the New UN Development Goals

Barbara Crossette

• May 17, 2015

Before this year ends, the United Nations will have committed itself and its 193 member governments to a new 15-year development strategy to be hailed as a blueprint for ending poverty, expanding social justice and strengthening equality. Equality for whom is the question. Missing by deliberate design from the new plan, called the Sustainable …