Archive for November 2011
"Can you call someone?" I kept being asked, "We want to be able to vote." I set off at 4:45 this morning - bleary-eyed but as tightly wound with excitement and anticipation as the city of Kinshasa has been throughout the final weekend of the election campaign - to monitor polling in the quartier of Bandal. [...]
Kabul has just seen the end of the Loya Jirga - a mass meeting in which, traditionally, tribal elders meet to discuss matters of national and political importance. During the three-day event, around 2,000 Afghan nationals from across the country gathered in Kabul to discuss, among other things, peace negotiations here. It passed without incident - [...]
Violence against women and girls is unacceptable, yet it's one of the most widespread violations of human rights worldwide. As many as one in three women experiences violence or abuse at some point in her life. The Coalition Government is committed to preventing and tackling this violence and, through UK aid, is changing lives by helping [...]
Every time I drive around Kinshasa at the moment I see a new fabric banner singing the praises of one of thousands of Congolese politicians. There's a palpable sense of excitement in the air as pick-up trucks pass me by with groups of young people on the back cheering and singing and waving flags as [...]
This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (or Conference of the Parties – COP17) takes place in Durban, South Africa from 28 November to 9 December. Every year since the UN Convention on Climate Change came into force, participant countries have met at the Conference to gather and share information and decide how to work [...]
In a repeat of last year's 'Textbooks For All', I found myself once more at a huge logistics warehouse on the edge of Harare, in a marquee filled with dignitaries to launch the second phase of the Education Transition Fund programme (ETF). The UNICEF procurement people had driven such a hard bargain with book publishers that [...]
Pneumonia used to be called 'the old man's friend' by some, because it was thought to bring swift and painless death to elderly patients who become unconscious and slip away in their sleep. But 98.5% of pneumonia deaths actually happen in the developing world and pneumonia is not a friend. In fact, pneumonia is the world's [...]
