The aftershock of the global financial crisis threatens to deprive millions of children in the world’s poorest countries of an education, the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report warns. With 72 million children still out of school, a combination of slower economic growth, rising poverty and budget pressures could erode the gains of the past decade. “While rich countries nurture their economic recovery, many poor countries face the imminent prospect...

The strongest earthquake to hit Haiti in more than 200 years crushed thousands of structures, from humble shacks to the National Palace and the headquarters of U.N. peacekeepers. Destroyed communications made it impossible to tell the extent of destruction from Tuesday afternoon's 7.0-magnitude tremor or to estimate the number of dead lying among the collapsed buildings in Haiti's capital of about 2 million people. International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally told the...

The rich countries blame India and other developing nations for the world's rising emission levels. Here is proof that the boot is on the other foot. Fresh data released by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change says greenhouse gas emissions from the rich nations increased by 12.8% between 1990-2007, the latest period for which figures are available. While the industrialized countries are now gunning for India and China to...

Some 800 million people in the world were malnourished even before the food and economic crises hit.  Now a push to confront this longer-term problem is picking up steam. Leaders at recent global gatherings agreed to back a multibillion dollar initiative to boost agriculture and food security in low-income countries. Discussions on the overall design and level of funding are continuing. In September, the G20 asked the World Bank to...

Global economic and financial crisis (2007-2008) coupled with food and fuel crises (2006-2008) has pushed the number of undernourished in the world to 1.02 billion during 2009, This has happened despite international food commodity prices declining from their earlier peaks, finds a newly released report of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO, www.fao.org) titled: The State of Food Insecurity in the World Report 2009: Economic Crises-Impacts and Lessons Learnt....