A global effort to fight poverty with better population management that UN officials once hoped could "change the world" has made limited progress after one decade, a new UN study said yesterday.
UN member nations agreed at a landmark 1994 Cairo meeting on a wide-ranging plan that said birth control and other measures were essential in the battle to improve the plight of the poor and hungry, especially in developing countries.
But 10 years on, the effort to reach an ambitious series of UN targets aimed at bettering the fate of people and nations worldwide by 2015 has been held back by a host of problems including a lack of funds, the study said.
"The response of the international community has been inadequate," the study by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) concluded.
"Past commitments to development assistance must move from declarations of good intentions to active partnerships and investments," it said.
The Cairo accord said giving women the right to choose when to have babies -- birth control, in effect -- was essential to meeting a range of goals like ending extreme poverty and hunger, and fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Many developing countries have made strides in putting that plan into action but a shortage of money and "persistent gaps" in reaching the world's poorest people are hampering progress towards those goals, UNFPA said.
"Differences between poor and rich populations' access to family planning are staggering," it said.
"Women in the richest fifth of the population are five times more likely to have access to and use contraception than women in the poorest fifth," the study said.
It also outlined a number of other shortcomings, saying in particular that population growth was "increasing stress" on the environment amid global warming and water shortages.
"More than 350 million couples still lack access to a full range of family planning services ... [and] one third of all pregnant women receive no health care during pregnancy," it said.
"Some eight million women each year suffer life-threatening pregnancy related complications. Over 529,000 die as a consequence, 99 percent of them in developing countries," the study said.
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
‘TROUBLING’: The firing of Phelan, who was an adviser to a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan, was another example of ‘dysfunction’ under Trump, a US senator said US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general. The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to
RSS