News headlines in 2018, page 48

HARARE, Zimbabwe, Jul 27 (IPS) - Teldah Mawarire is a campaigns and advocacy officer with global civil society alliance, CIVICUS.

For many Zimbabwean voters, casting their ballots on July 30 is sure to be a somewhat surreal experience. For the first time since the country's independence, the ever-present face of Robert Mugabe will not be staring back at them on the ballot paper.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 (IPS) - Justine Masika Bihamba is President of Synergie des Femmes, a women's organization based in Goma, DRC, and partner of global women's group Donor Direct Action.

I am a women's human rights defender and President of Synergie des Femmesa platform of 35 organizations working for the improvement, promotion, defense, respect and protection of women's rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

AMSTERDAM, Jul 27 (IPS) - Dr Chewe Luo is Global Chief of HIV/AIDS for UNICEF.

As the 22nd International AIDS Conference wraps up in Amsterdam, I can't help but reflect on how far we have come on this journey with the AIDS epidemic.

ROME, Jul 27 (IPS) - In Italy, over 400,000 agricultural labourers risk being illegally employed by mafia-like organisations, and more than 132,000 work in extremely vulnerable conditions, enduring high occupational suffering, warns the fourth report on Agromafie and Caporalato.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 26 (IPS) - Better and prolonged education can bring down high rates of illiteracy, sexual abuse and early marriage among girls.

ISLAMABAD, Jul 26 (IPS) - Aliya Iftikhar* is Asia Research Associate at the Committee to Protect Journalists. When it comes to the military and the judiciary, Pakistan's journalists are "between a rock and a hard place," Zohra Yusuf, of the independent non-profit Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told CPJ.

Jul 26 (IPS) - Last year, Mohamed Keita returned home to Mali after living and working in Libya for six years. Eighteen months ago he was arrested by security forces in Libya as he and other migrants tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe via a makeshift boat. After spending six months in jail, which traumatised him, he was transported back to Mali.

But as soon as he arrived he immediately knew that it would be difficult for him to stay put.

WASHINGTON DC, Jul 26 (IPS) - Lauren Braniff & Michel Hanouch, Consultative Group to Assist the Poor. The CGAP, which is housed at the World Bank, is a global partnership of more than 30 leading organizations that seek to advance financial inclusion.Households in developing countries spent $148 billion out-of-pocket for healthcare expenses in 2015, and each year 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty because of the high cost of healthcare.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 26 (IPS) - Economic divergence among countries and regions was never pre-ordained. According to the late cliometrician Angus Madison and other economic historians, the great divergence between the global North and South, between developed and developing countries, began around five centuries ago, from the beginning of the European, particularly Iberian colonial conquests.

JAKARTA, Jul 25 (IPS) - Since 2013, the Global Green Growth Institute has been working with the government of Indonesia promoting green growth. IPS correspondent Kanis Dursin interviewed Indonesia Deputy Country Representative Dagma Zwebe about the country's steps in mitigating climate change.

The South Asian nation of Indonesia is the world's fifth-largest emitter of greenhouses gases (GHG) and is ranked as the world's second-largest plastic polluter of oceans, just behind China. So when the country committed in the Paris Agreement to limit the rise in average global temperatures to below 2°C by unconditionally reducing its emissions by 29 percent with using its own finances and by 41 percent with international funding, many felt the goals too ambitious.