Ertharin Cousin, the US representative to the United Nations, disclosed this week that the US would facilitate the World Food Program to double the size of its Purchase for Progress program. I think this is great news.
Typically, the US government buys rice, corn and wheat grown in the US and donates it to the WFP, who then ships it around the world to hungry people. This takes a long time and it sometimes acts as a disincentive for local farmers to produce food.
The 2010 Global Report on the AIDS Epidemic, released this morning by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), reveals progress in the fight against the epidemic — albeit much too slowly. Globally, new infections have fallen, AIDS-related deaths are down and the total number of people living with HIV is stabilizing.
Data from the 2010 UNAIDS report estimates that 2.6 million people became newly infected with HIV and the number of AIDS-related deaths decreased to 1.8 million in 2009, compared to 3.1 million new infections in 1999 and 2.1 million deaths in 2004. In sub-Saharan Africa, the region most affected by the epidemic, 1.8 million people became newly infected with HIV and 1.3 million AIDS-related deaths occurred in 2009.
By the end of 2009, 33.3 million people globally were living with HIV largely due to improvements in access to treatment. Additionally, from 2001 to 2009, the rate of new HIV infections stabilized or decreased by more than 25 percent in at least 56 countries around the world — including 34 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
I seriously can’t believe Thanksgiving is only one week away. I’m usually pretty bad about taking time to reflect and be thankful, but that changed just 13 minutes ago.
13 minutes ago, I hit play on a stop-you-in-your tracks kind of video. It’s longtime ONE supporter Bob Geldof talking before a crowd of folks at the end of the UN Millennium Development Goal Summit in New York City early this September.
I know that doesn’t necessarily sound that exciting, but trust me on this one. It’s a must watch. It’s funny, powerful, hit-you-in-the-gut good. I’ve never seen anyone talk so powerfully about our journey in the fight against poverty — or leave me so inspired to want to do even more.
So, take a look for yourself. It’s a little long, but it’s guaranteed to give you goosebumps. And I’d love to hear what you think after you’ve taken a look. Leave a comment right below!
Today, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the Human Development Report 2010 (HDR), which highlights development gains over the last 40 years and ranks countries according to achievement, health, education and income. The report, titled “The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development,” provides new insights into the trends and patterns of development and introduces measurement innovations on inequality, gender and acute poverty.
The report has been a staple for policymakers in the development community since it started in 1990. Its ultimate goal? Help advance human development by putting people at the center of the discussion and provide people with the right facts and figures on the issue. So, it’s no surprise that each annual report is guided by the simple notion that “the real wealth of nation is its people.”
In a nutshell, this year’s report shows that people are “healthier, wealthier and better educated” since 1970. In the past 40 years, average life expectancy rose from 59 to 70 years, primary school enrollment grew from 55 to 70 percent, and per capita income doubled to more than $10,000.
Watch the UNDP’s video above, which has some great insights on this year’s report or read a short summary of the report here.
When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Michaél Martin, T.D., Ireland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, co-hosted the session “Partnering to Reduce Child Undernutrition” at the MDGs, world leaders and international organizations were asked to start putting more of an emphasis on the vital 1,000-day nutrition window that starts from the moment of conception to the 2nd birthday of each child.
As Nicholas Kristof said in his New York Times column last week, the cycle of poverty in the developing world can start as soon as a child is conceived:
As world leaders converge on New York for the UN General Assembly meeting this week, ONE cofounder Bono writes today in his column for the New York Times that one test of the meeting’s success will be whether leaders recommit to the Millennium Development Goals, “possibly the most visionary deal that most people have never heard of.”
Bono writes of the many successes achieved in part because of the goals – from millions of lives saved from preventable disease, to tens of millions more kids in school – and calls on leaders to do three specific things: 1.) fully fund the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and the campaign to ensure no child is born with HIV by 2015, 2.) enact transparency legislation in Britain, the EU and across the G20 that echoes the recently passed US legislation requiring energy companies to report payments to government officials and 3.) better track world leaders pledges and progress against them, so we know what has been promised and whether it has been delivered.
In case you weren’t tuned in to the State Department’s “Conversations with America” series yesterday, you missed a great preview of next week’s gathering of world leaders in New York City to accelerate and drive the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It starred ONE’s own David Lane and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah.
While listening to the discussion, several themes jumped out at me.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
