MADRID -- Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will visit Madrid today to talk with Spain’s new government about its overseas aid commitments – at a time when its leaders begin discussions about restructuring the country’s development aid policy.
Comité spécial des opérations
de maintien de la paix
Session de fond de 2012
224e & 225e séances – matin & après-midi
Les délégations insistent sur le respect du consentement des parties, de l’impartialité et du non-recours à la force avant le déploiement d’une opération
Nwanze says long-term rural development is most effective for poverty reduction
Rome, 22 February 2012 – In his address to the 35th Governing Council, Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), today committed to pull up to 90 million people out of poverty.
Special Committee on
Peacekeeping Operations
224th & 225th Meetings (AM & PM)
Praise and criticism over perceived triumphs and failures peppered demands for clearly defined mandates, sustained funding, entry and exit strategies and strict compliance with core principles as the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations concluded its general debate today.
The use of maps in humanitarian response is not a new phenomena - the shift with application of new technologies is in live mapping, which enables presentation on a map not only of geographic reference points, but also of events, needs, and stories. Live maps present material over both time and space - mappers collect information, visualize, analyse and geolocate events that allow for a response to that information.
Democracy is necessary but not enough, says UNDP Arab Development report
Cairo - The Arab Development Challenges Report 2011 was launched in a public meeting in Cairo with representatives from the Egyptian government along with academic and development professionals.
Blogger Rami Nakhle leaned across the table toward a cluster of U.S. technology leaders. "People are tortured to death because their Facebook account is hacked. You can make a difference between life and death," he told the Silicon Valley executives and computer engineers representing Facebook, Google, and other companies.
Fourth Global Meeting of the Farmers' Forum being held at IFAD
Rome, 21 February 2012 – Representatives of farmers and rural producers from all over the world gathered at the Rome headquarters of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for the Fourth Global Meeting of the Farmers’ Forum.
On February 21, 2012, USAID released the final report by an external evaluation team of the first five years (FY 2006-FY 2010) of the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). PMI is a major component of the U.S. Government’s Global Health Initiative (GHI), announced by President Barack Obama in May 2009. PMI, led by USAID and implemented together with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was launched in June 2005 by President George W. Bush to reduce the intolerable burden of malaria and help relieve poverty on the African continent.
The new application, called “CyberMappr”, has been developed within the Citizen Cyberscience Centre (CCC), created by UNITAR, CERN and University of Geneva as an incubator of new tools involving citizen-to-citizen cyberscience. CyberMappr uses the internet to connect volunteers to each other and to a group of expert analysts at UNOSAT with one common mission. The initiative gained support from Hewlett Packard and the Shuttleworth Foundation, which is known for its support to groundbreaking ideas especially in the area of data sharing at global scale.
Organized crime is threatening the already fragile peace, security and stability in West Africa and the Sahel region, according to UN officials and other leaders.
At a Security Council meeting hosted by Togo, the country’s President, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbe said more resources and a greater commitment from the international community are needed.
In 2003 the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) was established by the assembly of the African Union (AU) aiming to raise agricultural productivity by at least 6% per year and increasing public investment in agriculture to 10% of national budgets per year. After an initial phase focused primarily on interventions at the national level, there is growing awareness on the need to work more on the regional dimensions of the CAADP.
The purpose of humanitarian assistance is to enable people to survive crises and disasters, with an impartial focus on those who are most at risk. This study quantifies the funding provided by donors to meet the humanitarian needs of two of the most vulnerable groups: older people and people with disabilities. It does so by analysing the amount of humanitarian funding targeted at these two groups through the UN Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) and Flash Appeals in 2010 and 2011.
Researchers say indigenous people are among the most vulnerable to climate change. They’re studying how extreme weather events can trigger more disease outbreaks.
Scientists say extreme weather events have accompanied a rise in global temperatures. Droughts, heavy rains and floods have put indigenous people around the world at risk.
In July 2012, UN member states will meet to negotiate a legally binding international instrument governing the transfer of conventional arms: the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The ATT initiative represents an important and timely step in the global struggle against illicit arms transfers and signifies that the issue of arms transfer controls has risen to the top of the UN agenda.
Developing countries are being urged to stay on track in the fight against HIV and AIDS or else the epidemic will “explode”
That’s according to the UN Joint Programme on HIV and AIDS or UNAIDS.
Over the last decade, the number of new HIV infections has gone down by 20%. But donor fatigue coupled with a global apathy when it comes to HIV and AIDS could threaten this progress.
