As the Ebola epidemic raged in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, crowding patients into hospitals and quarantining people in their homes, swathes of farmland lay empty. Agriculture—and smallholder farmers—have been devastated by the Ebola crisis. The resulting drop in agricultural productivity has made hunger a problem for greater numbers of people.
By July, 4.6 million people in South Sudan's could be severely food insecure. On 16 June an aid pledging conference is being held in Geneva.
It’s all over but the shouting. But the shouting is still loud, and it’s mostly about the indicators. And the indicators, ultimately, may be all that matters about the United Nations’ new sustainable development goals. After more than two years of complex, contentious negotiations, the essential content and most of the actual text of the United Nations’s post-2015 agenda have now been decided, though nobody will officially say so yet.
This year on the occasion of the World Day against Child Labour, the International Labour Organization (ILO) is calling attention to education as a key tool to end child labour. According to ILO, 10% of all children between five and 14 are engaged in some form of labour. There are still 120 million school-aged children working worldwide, down from 186 million in 2000. Furthermore, almost one third of child labourers are involved in hazardous forms of work that threatens their health, safety or morals.
Since 2009–2010, when India made eight years of education a fundamental right, the number of 6–14 year olds going to school has grown by over a million. But data from Andhra Pradesh show that a rise in enrolment is associated with a worrying collapse in learning standards.
With thousands worldwide being denied education due to attacks on schools and universities, and the use of school buildings by armed groups, 37 countries have committed to protecting students and their education during armed conflict.
Almost one third of the targets that define the 17 Sustainable Development Goals approved by the governments at the United Nations are being de facto rewritten or deleted by the Inter-Agency Expert Group proposal of “priority indicators” published on 1 June in New York.