World

Through conflict after conflict, sexual violence persists, not just as individual crimes but as a weapon of war, from the Balkans to the Congo, from Liberia and Sierra Leone to present day Iraq.

Sex discrimination at work costs women in poor countries $9 trillion each year – more than the combined GDPs of Britain, France and Germany. This huge inequality exists because women get paid less than men and do not enjoy the same rates of employment: the ‘gender employment gap’.

UNITED NATIONS, New York – The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a resolution calling for increased actions to end obstetric fistula. The largely preventable condition is estimated to afflict some 2 million women around […]

In an age when information equals power, Armanshahr/OPEN ASIA has created a powerful informative tool for Persian-speakers through its weekly thematic bulletins. Generally short of time, individuals usually cannot allocate much time to monitor news or various sources every day and keep abreast of the important political, social, cultural and human rights issues.

Within the local-to-global context of citizen action, many activists and scholars agree that we face a “crisis of discourse”. Words that once imparted radical visions of social change have been co-opted by more powerful groups, rendering them devoid of their original meaning or politics.

Millions of people’s lives have improved due to concerted global, regional, national and local efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which serve as the foundation for the next global development agenda, according to the report launched by the Secretary-General on 7 July 2014.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR on 6 January 2015 reported* that war in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere had uprooted an estimated 5.5 million people during the first six months of 2014, signaling a further rise in the number of people forcibly displaced.

Armanshahr/OPENASIA HR & Civil Society Newsletter – issue 99 year VII

If we really want to fix development, we need to stop chasing after ideas the way we go on fad diets. Successful programs should be allowed to expand by degrees, not digits (direct cash payments, which have shown impressive results in Kenya and Uganda, are a great candidate for the kind of deliberate expansion I’m talking about).

The goal of reducing gender inequalities in political representation has been elusive in many different kinds of political systems, even though women have made substantial progress in other areas, such as education, employment and healthcare.