3 women share the Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Committee has awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to three women for working to promote democracy, security and women’s rights. Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee, and Yemeni opposition leader Tawakkul Karman will split the $1.5 million prize. Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland praised the women for “their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”
Rare footage provides glimpse of hunger in North Korean
The scale of the food shortages in North Korea is highlighted in uncharacteristically frank video footage allowed by the country’s secretive regime, showing malnourished orphans and grim assessments by medical professionals.
U.S. bill would trim $50 million from UNFPA
Conservative lawmakers took aim at the United Nations Population Fund in a bill that would eliminate the $50 million budget request made by U.S. President Barack Obama for the agency. Republicans who backed the bill in the Foreign Affairs Committee said they were upset by UNFPA’s work in China, which maintains a policy limiting the number of children each family can have, and said the UN agency was complicit in forced sterilizations and abortions. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Howard Berman of California, said, “Don’t hold the UN culpable for what a sovereign country does, as obnoxious as it is.”
Nigerian leaders are offered cash incentives to end polio
Governors in Nigeria who end polio in their regions by 2012 would be awarded $500,000 under a new initiative from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The award also recognizes efforts to stem malaria and tuberculosis, and improvements in the delivery of routine vaccinations.
Marching to provide cleaner cooking stoves
Volunteers in California have begun a march they’re calling a Woodwalk, imitating the search that women make in many developing countries to gather wood for fires and stoves, producing smoke that not only kills and sickens millions of women and children, but contributes significantly to global warming. The 10-day, 136-mile trek from San Diego to Los Angeles is part of the Paradigm Project’s effort to draw attention to its effort to provide clean cooking stoves to 5 million people.
Carter looks to fund guinea worm eradication
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is conducting a funding drive to secure commitments to help eradicate guinea worm, a parasitic disease that remains endemic in only four African countries. British authorities have indicated that they will commit $31 million to the effort over the next four years if other donors also participate in the eradication drive.
UNESCO hosts forum on education gender gaps
Academics, government and NGO representatives have gathered for a two-day UNESCO forum to discuss the causes behind gender equality in education. Enrollment ratios have increased around the world over the past decade, but large gaps remain in Sub-Saharan and Arab countries, UNESCO said.
Inside the world of child brides
Understanding the true depth of the issue of child marriage sometimes requires a new lens, so to speak. BBC presenter Nel Hedayat travels to India and Bangladesh, countries with two of the highest child marriage rates, to chronicle what life is like for one of the 10 million girls worldwide who are married off each year before they reach the age of 18. The 23-year-old Hedayat has a legacy of child marriage in her family, as both of her grandmothers and an aunt were married as children in her native Afghanistan.
China launches anti-polio campaign
A decade after China was declared free of polio, the country has launched a massive polio vaccination campaign targeting millions of children — in homes, schools, kindergartens, bus stations and airports, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative — after the recent discovery of 10 cases of the virus in the western province of Xinjiang. It has been shown that the virus entered China from neighboring Pakistan.
Mobile schools help educate India’s poorest
Old buses are being converted into classrooms in Delhi, the capital of India, and driven to poor neighborhoods where children are offered two hours of classes daily. The program, which is supported by the UN Children’s Fund, sometimes provides the only formal instruction for children who are not enrolled in government schools, and whose parents are uneducated.
Uighur women need protection
Threats to the traditions and customs of ethnic Uighurs living in a western province of China are flying under the radar, writes Marla Mossman, founder of the Peace Caravan project, which focuses on historic Silk Road communities. Mossman participated last week in the Social Good Summit co-hosted by the United Nations Foundation.
