Full Coverage: MDGs

28.01.2008 About 30% of schools in India are without permanent structures, about 14% have no drinking water facility and about 60% have no separate toilets for girls, according to the latest official figures. It is obvious that lack of infrastructure has impact on quality of education.

25.01.2008 Food crisis in Afghanistan is deepening by the day. Afghan government has expressed its inability to tackle the food insecurity on its own and has appealed together with the UN for US $ 80 million assistance to avert this humanitarian tragedy.

25.01.2008 Lack of good sanitation and toilets are causing extensive environmental damage and making 5,000 infants die every day. ItÂ’s time to break the worldÂ’s silence on this global crisis and smell the stink round the corner, says Barbara Frost, Chief Executive, WaterAid.

23.01.2008 A Dalit-centric policy framework can help the disadvantaged community to have a greater say in local and national programmes and their implementation, says a report released this month by the peopleÂ’s campaign Wada Na Todo Abhiyan.

23.01.2008 For parents grappling with poverty, sending kids to school is difficult; for teachers it is hard to keep them at school when they are always hungry. Nepal is faced with a problem of children either not enrolling or dropping out due to widespread hunger.

23.01.2008 More than 26,000 children die everyday in the world before they see their fifth birthday. Along with sub-Saharan Africa, India has been identified with high under-five mortality in UNICEFÂ’s new report on the state of the worldÂ’s children. It calls for community-level integration of essential services to arrest this disturbing phenomenon.

22.01.2008 As the world grapples with the impact of climate change, a book titled: State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy, by WorldWatch Institute highlights the shift towards innovative environmental policies. Corporate groups are investing huge capital to make the global economy environment friendly.

22.01.2008 In another effort to empower women, the Ministry of Women and Child Development in India has prepared a handbook on gender-budgeting. It provides guidelines for all central ministries to ensure a greater say for women in the planning process to remove disparities in access and control over resources.

18.01.2008 Palm oil companies are clearing forests with fires for plantations, says the latest Greenpeace report: Cool farming: Climate impacts of agriculture and mitigation potential. The report says that industrial agriculture is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases and suggests alternative methods and techniques to prevent the damage.

17.01.2008 First of its kind in Bangladesh, DreamsPower is a 250 KW biomass gasification facility. Using the rice husk, this will generate renewable electricity and is part of a rural electrification project that will benefit hundreds of thousands of people living in villages.

17.01.2008 The Socio Economic Development Trust has succeeded in bringing thousands of dropouts in villages of western India back to school. Bal Panchayats or village-level children's organisations have played a prominent role not only in mobilising kids and their parents, but also teachers and officials to be responsive to their needs.

16.01.2008 Gender inequality and discrimination significantly affect the development of community as a whole. Gender mainstreaming project: the gender issue, a paper brought out by Government of Pakistan Planning and Development Division, talks of prevalence of gender disparity in the country and its relation to the Millennium Development Goals.

15.01.2008 The Sono filter, a local innovation, offers hope to millions in Bangladesh who lack access to safe drinking water. Arsenic contaminated groundwater exists in all but one of the countryÂ’s 64 districts, and adversely impacts the health of those who ingest it over long periods.

14.01.2008 The Harry Chapin Media Awards were created in 1982 to encourage the media to tell stories of hunger and poverty. These global awards recognise work on causes of economic poverty and forces leading to self-reliance of poor. The current deadline for submitting entries is February 1, 2008.

12.01.2008 Concept of micro-credit is bringing about a silent revolution in more than 60 districts of rural Nepal by helping people in augmenting their income. Hundreds and thousands of poor families have access to different micro-finance institutions and they indeed are trying to take the maximum benefit out of this facility.

10.01.2008 Providing an overview on the achievements of the MDGs in India, a citizenÂ’s report titled: Measuring IndiaÂ’s Progress on the Millennium Development Goals was released on January 7 in New Delhi by Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA).

09.01.2008 New figures from World Health Organisation claim there has been a 50% fall in deaths from tuberculosis in Afghanistan. While over 50,000 new cases occur each year, TB diagnosis and treatment, now part of the Basic Package Health Services, reach more people in the country.

09.01.2008 OneWorld South Asia's Annual Regional Meeting to be held on 8-9 February in Indian capital New Delhi will address the contention between the burning issue of climate change and developments goals in the region and underline the need for enhanced Southern participation.

09.01.2008 The Indian state of Madhya Pradesh was honoured by the Millennium Campaign for its key participation at last yearÂ’s Stand Up and Speak Out initiative on October 17. The state witnessed a record turnout of more than half a million people in support of the campaignÂ’s cause.

08.01.2008 Vigorous campaigns in IndiaÂ’s north-eastern state of Tripura by the government have steered ahead the immunisation drive. Employing both traditional and modern methods like drum beating and making announcements using helicopters have helped in ensuring overwhelming participation by tribals, says Ratna Bharali Talukdar, a renowned Guwahati-based freelance journalist.