Citizens can now seek and obtain information from public authorities that would shed light on their integrity and diligence. There can be no better tool to keep public authorities in check. Despite such clarity, however, the law has remained underutilised. Misunderstanding about its objectives abound among all classes of citizens

http://www.ipsnews.net/20…/…/rti-act-learning-how-to-use-it/

The Minawao refugee camp in Cameroon’s Far North region hosts about 60,000 Nigerians who have fled their homes since 2011 because of attacks carried out by the Islamist terror group, Boko Haram

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/refugees-from-boko-haram-languish…/

The World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2017, subtitled ‘Equal Opportunity for All’, continues to mislead despite the many criticisms, including from within, levelled against the Bank’s most widely read publication, and Bank management promises of reform for many years

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/more-of-the-same-world-bank-doing…/

Come 2017, the United Nations will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s longstanding unresolved political problems firmly entrenched on the UN agenda: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dating back to the Six Day War in June 1967.

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/israeli-palestinian-conflict-head…/

Synthetic biology, geoengineering and the recognition of ancestral knowledge are the issues that have generated the most heated debate in the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity, #COP13

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/new-technologies-a-focus-of-debat…/

Sri Lanka: The newly minted Right to Information (RTI) act will take effect on Feb. 4, 2017, according to officials at the Ministry of Mass Media and the Department of Information

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/right-to-information-act-to-redef…/

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told UN Security Council members of credible reports of civilians in Aleppo being summarily executed during an emergency meeting. “History will not easily absolve us, but this failure compels us to do even more to offer the people of Aleppo our solidarity at this moment,” said Ban Ki-moon

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/war-of-words-in-un-security-counc…/

Crop failure, rising sea levels and flooding all caused by climate change is pushing migration like never before in South Asia, says a joint study released by ActionAid, Climate Action Network-South Asia and Bread for the World (Brot Fuer Die Welt)

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/for-south-asian-policy-makers-cli…/

“The UN set itself a goal of reaching gender parity by 2000, it set that goal in 1993. 23 years later and progress in reaching the goal has been pathetic, faltering, and sometimes flatlining.”

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/gender-equality-clear-priority-fo…/

“If you look across countries, institutions working on gender equality and women’s rights issues are the least funded. Gender ministries are the least funded. Feminists organizations don’t have the funds to organize to advance women’s rights,”

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/putting-women-front-and-centre-in…/

“We don’t have access to marine areas, because most are protected areas or are in private hands. We indigenous people have been losing access to our territories, as this decision became a privilege of the state,” complained Donald Rojas, a member of the Brunka indigenous community in Costa Rica.

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/developmentalism-and-conservation…/

Up to two billion people live in countries affected by violence, conflict and fragility. Often, such political instability goes hand in hand with food insecurity

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/food-insecurity-an-agent-for-viol…/

Nana Akufo-Addo's message of building a factory in each of the 216 districts in Ghana and ensuring that farming communities, especially in the northern part of the country, have irrigation facilities for year-round production of crops – the one-village-one-dam policy – seems to have been well received by voters

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/new-anti-corruption-leader-takes-…/

In Kenya the Gini coefficient of inequality is at around 0.45%. Therefore, the economic growth statistics present an unequivocal picture of a highly unequal society, whose development strategy is largely leading to accumulation of wealth by a few and worsening the poverty of the majority.

http://www.ipsnews.net/…/why-achieving-sdg-goal-8-on-decen…/