News headlines in March 2019, page 12

MANILA, Mar 05 (IPS) - Discrimination against women who are affected by leprosy or Hansen's Disease is a harsh reality, says Alice Cruz is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy and their family members.

MANILA, Mar 05 (IPS) - Organisations of people affected by leprosy in Asia have agreed to form a regional-level secretariat to support national advocacies and represent their collective agenda at a world conference to be held later this year.

MANILA, Mar 05 (IPS) - Takahiro Nanri is the Executive Director of Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation which has been supporting the global fight against leprosy for almost five decades. Since 2014, Nanri has been leading the foundation's leprosy projects across the world and has deep insights into the challenges faced by the people affected by leprosy as well as the organisations that work with them.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 05 (IPS) - Over recent years, there have been shocking reports of marine endangerment and plastic pollution. The threats are clear, and now urgent action is needed more than ever.

BARCELONA, Mar 04 (IPS) - Leire Gurruchaga Iraola is Gender Specialist at Educo, described as a global development and humanitarian action NGO with over 25 years' experience working to defend children and their rights, and especially the right to an equitable and quality education.

The data – with its sexism and its gaps – shows us that many of the barriers girls experience are determined merely by their gender.

This inequality, present in all societies, is by far the most widespread bias. At Educo we are determined, like the women and girls we work with, to put a stop to this injustice. And not just on International Women's Day March 8, but every day.

MANILA, Mar 04 (IPS) - The tragic tale of Thobias Alexander Manas's personal experience with leprosy is all too typical.

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Mar 04 (IPS) - I assume it was the Swedish author Stieg Larsson´s Millenium trilogy (2005-2007) that generated the popularity of Scandinavian Crime Fictionas well numerous movies and TV-series that followed in its wake. A typical Nordic Noir novel takes place within a gloomy landscape of dreary towns, or a semi-deserted countryside, where under the thin surface of an apparently well-ordered society, murder, misogyny, rape, racism and international crime syndicates are thriving.

MANILA, Mar 04 (IPS) - Kurarenga Kaitire lives in Kiribati—one of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations. Already vulnerable to nature, the 29-year-old mother of five has faced a series of vulnerabilities over the past decade, including facing social stigma and domestic abuse.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 04 (IPS) - Dulcie Leimbach* was a fellow of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of CUNY from 2012 to 2017. She is the founder of PassBlue, for which she edits and writes, covering primarily the United Nations, West Africa, peacekeeping operations and women's issues.

As multilateralism takes a beating from President Trump amid the "new world disorder," as one European diplomat put it, three women who know the United Nations inside and out through previous top leadership jobs have originated a Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion.

Mar 04 (IPS) - Marie Lisa Dacanay is the president of Manila–based Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Asia. With 20 years of experience in development management, social entrepreneurship and enterprise development, Dacanay is also a university professor and an acclaimed author with several books on social entrepreneurship in Asia.