Development

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

• 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 …

Development, LGBT, SDGs

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Betting on a Data Revolution to Help Manage UN Development Goals

Maurizio Guerrero

• April 27, 2015

The United Nations is positioning itself to turn the vast amount of digital data generated by users all over the world into a key source of information to help write and track the goals for the post-2015 development agenda. The aim is to seize for development purposes data generated by individuals through digital networks, …

Development, SDGs

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The Post-2015 Goals: People Around the World Talk Back

Barbara Crossette

• January 25, 2015

Advocates offering some alternative ideas and a few dissenting views on the Sustainable Development Goals on track to be adopted by the United Nations at a special session later this year are convening on Jan. 26 in New York to air opinions from all major developing regions on this critical new proposed set of …

Development, Governance, LGBT, SDGs, Women

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Can Good Governance Become a Global Development Goal?

Bill Orme

• October 28, 2014

British Prime Minister David Cameron had two clear messages when he spoke at a post-2015 global development goals forum on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last month. The first was his emphatic view that the General Assembly panel’s proposal for 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 associated “targets” was too unwieldy …

Development, SDGs, Secretary-General

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A Voice From Nigeria Pleads for an Africa Managed by Africans

Barbara Crossette

• October 15, 2014

Preparing for next year, when United Nations member governments will meet to grade the Millennium Development Goals and agree on a new set of benchmarks for 2015-2030, an important part of the discussion is focusing on Africa, the continent recognized as having great unrealized potential that is still unmet. Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, a former …

Africa, Development, Health and Population

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Where Ecuador Stands on Assange and on a ‘Good Life’

Steven Edwards

• October 5, 2014

Ecuador’s foreign minister says his country will indefinitely host the WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, at its embassy in London if that is what it takes to spare him from an eventual extradition to the United States. In a wide-ranging interview with PassBlue during the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in late …

Development, Latin America, Poverty, US Foreign Relations, Women

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How Is the UN’s Development Machinery Perceived? Does Anyone Care?

Stephen Browne and Thomas G. Weiss

• August 22, 2014

One year ago, the report of a high-level panel of world leaders and renowned development specialists proposed 12 goals and 50 indicators for the United Nation’s post-2015 agenda. These were already unwieldy numbers, but after a year and a half of juggling and negotiations, member states in New York on the Open Working Group …

Development

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Human Development That Sidetracks a Woman’s Power of Choice

Barbara Crossette

• August 4, 2014

The 2014 United Nations Human Development Report appeared at the end of July wrapped around the title “Sustaining Human Progress,” a goal that moves beyond meeting the targets that can measure achievement at any given time but cannot promise continuity or permanent improvement. The report’s subtitle, “Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience,” suggests how to …