In a statement released Tuesday, National Security Council (NSC) spokesman Tommy Vietor welcomed the South Sudanese government’s investigation into the escalation of violence between the Murle and Lou Nuer tribes, and urges the need for a peaceful long-term resolution.
According to AlertNet, the violence has displaced 60,000 since December. The New York Times reports that the death toll is uncertain, anywhere from “scores” to 3,000.
From 2002-2008, two-thirds of the growth in renewable and nuclear power was in developing countries, according to Foreign Policy. This rapid growth is expected to continue. India plans significant renewable energy growth by 2020 and China can boast about its tough fuel efficiency standards and diversified power generation methods.
One of the challenges in diagnosing illnesses in the developing world is that many people live several hours’ journey from a clinic, and then they have to wait multiple days for blood test results to come back. A new invention called the mChip could make dramatic advances in medical diagnoses.
InterAction is pleased to announce that FedEx has awarded additional funding to continue work on Haiti Aid Map through July 2012. The map, an online interactive tool that charts where nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are working in Haiti along with their activities, was officially launched in January 2011 with FedEx support.
In a statement today, InterAction said proposed cuts in the U.S. House of Representatives' State Department and foreign operations appropriations bill would have devastating consequences for the world's most vulnerable populations and gut core development and humanitarian spending accounts.
"Such cuts are counterproductive, short-sighted and portray the United States as a nation that doesn't care about the plight of the world's poorest people," said Samuel A. Worthington, president of InterAction, whose 200 members work in developing countries across the world.
Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) calls for a bipartisan rewrite of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act in a blog he wrote for the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN).
“Although foreign assistance accounts for less than 1 percent of our national budget, we must insist that every penny is used wisely,” he says in the blog. He also announces plans to release a discussion draft of the rewrite his office has been working on since 2009 in September of this year.
Today, the UN declared a famine in two regions of southern Somalia: southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle.
The UN has certain requirements to declare a famine: • More than 30 percent of children must be suffering from acute malnutrition; • Two adults or four children must be dying of hunger each day for every group of 10,000 people; and • The population must have access to far below 2,100 kilocalories of food per day.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a new program to address one of the least appealing but most urgent needs in development: toilets. More than 40 percent of the world’s population has no access to toilets, leading those people to use unsanitary and unhealthy alternatives—open pits, by rivers—increasing the risk for diseases and robbing people of a dignity that the most wealthy parts of the world take for granted.
A prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa region continues to push people from their homes in search of food and water, furthering the humanitarian crisis in the region.
"The situation across the Horn of Africa this year has really deteriorated in terms of food security and that has caused a deterioration in nutritional security as well," said Kristen Knutson, spokeswoman for the UN's humanitarian affairs office in Ethiopia.
Submitted by Blog Moderator on Thu, 08/01/2013 - 10:00am
A recent cover of The Economist featured a compelling story about how nearly 1 billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty in the past 20 years, and also called on the world to make an even greater effort to lift another 1 billion people out of extreme poverty by 2030.
Submitted by Blog Moderator on Thu, 07/25/2013 - 11:55am
I’m excited to announce that we have started taking applications for the 2013 ONE Africa Award, a $100,000 USD prize that ONE annually gives to an Africa-based, Africa-founded organisation campaigning for progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The number of children and youths who work – whether they’re paid or unpaid – is notoriously hard to pin down. Many countries have laws against employing children, but industries still continue to use child laborers despite legal and social consequences.
What number would you guess is accurate? A million? Six million? Ten?
Submitted by Blog Moderator on Tue, 07/16/2013 - 12:01pm
Over the course of my career I’ve spent more than 30 years working in various developing countries trying to better understand and fight infectious diseases. One of the things that alarmed me most was that in many places, parents and caretakers didn’t even have a word for diarrhea. Sadly, this wasn’t because diarrhea was rare. On the contrary, diarrhea was so common that it was seen as a normal part of early childhood, and thus didn’t need a name.
Let’s hope it’s not too good to be true, but it looks like Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, the White House, and USAID might agree on something—that U.S. foreign aid needs to be more transparent.
On Wednesday “Judge” Ted Poe (R-TX), joined by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) in the House, and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) in the Senate, introduced the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2013 (H.R. 2638 and S. 1271).
"Young people in development are both a project of reform and agents of change. This population is not static. They engage on multiple levels.” – Dr .Loubna Skalli-Hanna, Author, Editor and Professor at American University, School of International Service
What would you take if you had to flee? In Rakhine state, western Myanmar, everyone I asked said the same thing: Family. Many saw their homes burnt down in the communal riots of June and October 2012. They were so surprised by the attacks that they herded everyone out without stopping to take a single thing.
Submitted by Blog Moderator on Thu, 06/13/2013 - 10:19am
Winnie the Pooh was on to something. Anyone who has squeezed a chunk of fresh honeycomb and tasted the golden sugary ooze would agree that getting one’s head stuck inside a pot is well worth the risk.
But keeping bees, and enjoying the sweet profit of their labor, requires special skills and equipment, something many producers in Ethiopia lack.
Many still rely on physically demanding and less productive methods, like setting empty logs in trees and climbing up to get the honey out.
It is not often one gets excited over a dry, hard-to-understand government memorandum, but the newly released executive order, Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information, and its accompanying memorandum are grounds for applause.
Submitted by Blog Moderator on Tue, 05/28/2013 - 12:45pm
GRANBURY, Texas (May 21, 2013) — She was supposed to be Rancho Brazos’ newest Habitat for Humanity homeowner.
Olga Hernandez, a mother of four, had spent the past month packing up her family's belongings in preparation for moving out of their crowded rental home and into their own Habitat for Humanity house on Saturday, May 18.
But instead of moving into their dream home, the family was unpacking their boxes and preparing to stay in their rental house a while longer.
