Credit: WHO

BANGKOK, Thailand, Jun 9 2023 (IPS) – The second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on plastic pollution (INC-2), held in Paris, France, from May 29 to June 02, 2023, concluded with optimism and the prospect of ending plastics pollution. Over 700 delegates from 169 Member States agreed to prepare a ahead of the third session in November this year.

Among the more important and interesting debates, health advocates attending the negotiations that it was essential to discuss how to categorize the thousands of types of plastics, chemical precursors and products in a way that allows for a coherent approach to ending plastic pollution.

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Antoinette Sayeh is deputy managing director of the IMF, and Ralph Chami is assistant director of the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development.

Credit: URDEE IMAGE/ZUMA WIRE/ALAMY LIVE NEWS

Jun 4 2020 (IPS) – The COVID-19 pandemic is crippling the economies of rich and poor countries alike. Yet for many low-income and fragile states, the economic shock will be magnified by the loss of remittances—money sent home by migrant and guest workers employed in foreign countries.

Remittance flows into low-income and fragile states represent a lifeline that supports households as well as provides much-needed tax revenue. As of 2018, remittance flows to these countri…

Children study in a Community Based Education class in Miirwais Meena, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Credit: Fazel/UNICEF

LONDON, Nov 12 2020 (IPS) – As if four decades of war were not enough, then came the pandemic.

For each of the past five years, Afghanistan has been identified by the United Nations as the world’s deadliest country for children and, despite progress made in peace talks between the government and the Taliban, child and youth casualties from the ongoing conflict continue to mount in 2020.

Education itself has come under fire, with hundreds of attacks on schools and teachers. A 2018 joint report by the Afghanistan Ministry of…

KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Feb 9 2021 (IPS) – Refusal to temporarily suspend several World Trade Organization (WTO) intellectual property (IP) provisions to enable much faster and broader progress in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic should be grounds for International Criminal Court prosecution for genocide.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Making life-saving vaccines, medicines and equipment available, freely or affordably, has been crucial for containing the spread of many infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, polio and smallpox.

Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine, insisted that it remain patent free. Asked who owned the patent 65 years ago, he , “The peo…

Zwein during one of the 2019 protests in Beirut. Credit: Victoria El-Khoury Zwein

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Mar 12 2021 (IPS) – The fight for equality around the globe has taken a few steps forward in some countries which provides a glimmer of hope for future generations for increased female participation and representation. However, that particular fight is taking new shapes and forms in multiple corners of the world, where women are still persecuted, silenced, threatened, killed, harassed, and stripped off their basic human rights on a daily basis. The question today is, when will the world become a safer place for women and girls?

While the degree of severity …

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 3 2021 (IPS) – Hopes for an inclusive global economic recovery are fast fading. As rich countries have done little to ensure poor countries’ access to vaccines and fiscal resources, North-South “” will certainly widen.

Enhancing relief, recovery, transformation
While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has rich countries’ recovery prospects upward, the United Nations (UN) notes formidable challenges, especially for developing countries, due to the pandemic.

Anis Chowdhury

The of more setbacks for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), already behind schedule before the pandemic. Grim recovery prospects have be…