The writer is Communication Officer at Liberté Living-Lab, Paris France
Samah Ghalloussi, one of the entrepreneurs interviewed for the article with a worker of the French Red Cross. Credit: French Red Cross
PARIS, Apr 19 2021 (IPS) – This year s World Health Day on 7 April was an opportunity for three entrepreneurs to share their insights and reflections on a rather complex year due to the health crisis and comment on their experiences developing impactful products and services in this sector.
Emeric Lemaire, co-founder of , Samah Ghallousi, CEO of and Antoine Noel, co-founder and director of , are all either associates of , (a tech for good innovation space …
Stop Islamophobia
NEW DELHI, India, Jun 3 2021 (IPS) – A Muslim call centre operator at a COVID-19 ‘war room’, who once saw himself a COVID-warrior, is now unemployed after being falsely branded by a top politician as a key member of a bed-for-bribe scam. He is a victim of the rise in Islamophobia in India as the country grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic – with scant evidence of condemnation from the authorities, say activists.
Early in May, a member of Parliament for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Tejasvi Surya, stormed into a COVID-19 ‘war room’ ostensibly to expose an alleged bed-for-bribe scam.
In a video live streamed on his social me…
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 20 2021 (IPS) – Despite facing the world’s worst pandemic of the last century, rich countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO) have blocked efforts to enable more affordable access to the means to fight the pandemic.
Everyone knows access for all to the means for testing, treatment and prevention – including diagnostic tests, therapeutic medicines, personal protective equipment and vaccines – is crucial.
Anis Chowdhury
European deceit
In October 2020, South Africa and India requested the WTO to relevant provisions of its Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (). By May 2021, the propos…
NEW DELHI, India, Sep 9 2021 (IPS) – Wagma Saad, is an Internationally Trained Medical Doctor (ITMD) from Kabul Medical University, Afghanistan, currently living in Canada with her family. Saad graduated in 2016, an education that didn’t come easily to her. With numerous restrictions, blocks and challenges placed at every step, fighting numerous social and political battles, she chased her passion for science and medicine, and after seven years at medical school, she finally got to call herself a doctor.
Wagma Saad
“The time in Afghanistan around the early 2000’s was not very easy, and my parents went through a lot, fought a lot, just to be able to provide me with an …
Tuvalu’s farmers have watched their crops destroyed by extreme tropical weather. They are now using Funafala ‘food cubes’ to have greater control over their harvests.
CANBERRA, Australia , Oct 13 2021 (IPS) – Tuvalu, a small atoll island nation in the Central Pacific Ocean, is one of few countries in the world to have so far evaded the pandemic. But, while it has achieved a milestone with no recorded cases of COVID-19, its population of about 11,931 continues to battle food uncertainties and poor nutrition. These challenges, present long before the pandemic emerged, have been exacerbated by lockdown restrictions and economic hardships during th…
MADRID, Dec 6 2021 (IPS) – ”All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” These words are a sound introduction to the transcendental issue of human rights and equalities, as stated by the 1948 ().
The Declaration proclaims the “inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
All Human, All Equal is the slogan for the 2021, marked 10 December. Its relates to equality: “The principles of equality and non-discrimination are at the heart of human rights.”
According to the UN…
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 8 2022 (IPS) – Calls, even screams, to fight inflation above all else are getting shriller. Thankfully, even The Economist (5 Feb. 2022) reminds all, .
No inflation consensus
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva the world faces a runaway inflation threat. She urges policymakers to carefully calibrate fiscal and monetary policies, with more “specificity”, as not ‘one size fits all’.
Anis Chowdhury
Widespread reversal of COVID-19 spending and low interest rates threaten recovery. Similarly, Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill stressed the central bank was not going all out to t…
This year’s World Health Day launched a new warning: more than 13 million deaths around the world each year are due to “avoidable environmental causes”. Credit: Bigstock
MADRID, Apr 5 2022 (IPS) – While the world’s top scientists and experts continue their arduous work to finally submit to politicians at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (7-18 November 2022), a new alert now emerges: the climate crisis has already become the single biggest health thr…
SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, May 24 2022 (IPS) – A class war is being waged in the name of fighting inflation. All too many central bankers are raising interest rates at the expense of working people’s families, supposedly to check price increases.
Forced to cope with rising credit costs, people are spending less, thus slowing the economy. But it does not have to be so. There are much less onerous alternative approaches to tackle inflation and other contemporary economic ills.
Short-term pain for long-term gain?
Central bankers are agreed inflation is now their biggest challenge, but also admit having underlying the current inflationary surge. Many are increasingly alarmed by a possible “” of inflation and recession.
Nonetheless, they defend raising inte…
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug 17 2022 (IPS) – Global Public Investment. A short and simple phrase. But one that means so much.
At its most basic, GPI means public money being used to invest in goods and services that are of global benefit. There is no shortage of goods and services that need GPI, whether they be used to prevent or respond to environmental catastrophe, international war and conflict, or the next pandemic.
We live on a single, small and fragile planet and greater levels of GPI are needed to help us look after our planet; and invest in the global institutions and services needed to provide security and health for all.
This is why over th…