Pavol Stracansky
KIEV, Nov 29 2011 (IPS) – Ukrainian authorities are launching a massive nationwide project to transform the country s dangerous and inefficient waste disposal network as officials admit the former Soviet state is facing an ecological catastrophe .
Ukraine incinerates or recycles less than five percent of the more than 50 million tonnes of domestic waste produced in the country each year. Some 50 percent to 70 percent of all urban waste is recycled on average in the rest of Europe.
The remainder of the Ukraine s waste is dumped in more than 4,000 landfill sites that not only take up 7 percent of the country s land area more than its national parks combined but which, according to state environmental bodies, fail to meet even the most basic of environme…
This story is part two of a three-part series on how social and economic inequalities impact cancer treatment. The third installment examines how Peru’s Plan Esperanza is providing comprehensive treatment for cancer patients, especially the poor.
The King Hussein Cancer Centre, Jordan’s premier cancer treatment facility located in Amman, is being expanded to double its capacity as national and regional cancer rates continue to rise. Credit: Elizabeth Whitman/IPS
AMMAN, Apr 10 2014 (IPS) – The concrete skeleton of a twin 13-storey complex towers over surrounding buildings on one of Amman s busiest streets. The ongoing expansion of the King Hussein Cancer …
In Nepal, 38 percent of the population still defecates in the open. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2014 (IPS) – At the height of his election campaign last October, Narendra Modi, India s Hindu nationalist leader, briefly set aside his spiritual aspirations when he told a surprised audience that economic development should take precedence over religion.
Toilets before temples, pleaded Modi, the newly-elected prime minister of India, a country which has been in the throes of a perpetual sanitation crisis, and where open defecation is an all-too-common sight in villages and urban slums.
As chief minister of the state of Gujarat, M…
Lakshmi Puri is Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 17 2015 (IPS) – The efforts of the United Nations and the global women’s movement to promote the women’s rights agenda and make it a top international priority saw its culmination in the creation of U.N. Women, by the General Assembly in 2010.
UN Women is the first and only composite entity of the U.N. system, with a universal mandate to promote the rights of women through the trinity of normative support, operational programmes and U.N. system coordinat…
Jul 7 2016 – Poverty, according to the United Nations, is “a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.”
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