Time.com ran an article yesterday that addressed a tough question – what is going to happen to amputees in Haiti? What happens to a culture that has traditionally excluded amputees when suddenly 100,000 people lose limbs? And how do those amputees get the medical care that they need? One answer might be an affordable prosthetic foot developed in India.
This is just horrid. Christian Science Monitor reports that for the first time in Malaysia, three women were caned this month after being charged with adultery by a court of Islamic law.
As you probably know by now, the head of the UN Frameworlk Convention on Climate Change Yvo De Boer is stepping down. Often referred to as the UN's top climate change negotiator, de Boer had the very difficult task of balancing the interests of over 180 member states while marshaling an international agreement that could curb the catastrophic effects of climate change. Arguably his biggest triumph was the 2007 "Bali Road Map" wh
King Tutankhamun, an Egyptian pharaoh of
Colum Lynch gets his hands on an email that the top UN Humanitarian official John Holmes sent to his deputies in which the OCHA chief is critical of how certain UN agencies are handling their responsibilities. At issue is the "cluster" mechanism that the UN put into place a few years ago in which certain UN agencies take the lead in coordinating the humanitarian response in specified sectors.
For a long time, received wisdom held that migration of skilled professionals out of the developing world was damaging to poor countries. Wealthy countries gained, developing countries didn’t. Africa was hit especially hard by labor migration.
Or was it?
Issues surrounding the exploitation of Haiti's orphans are increasingly coming to light in the wake of the January 12 earthquake. Fortunately, we have UNICEF on the ground. The organization is setting up a way of systematically identifying and caring for Haiti's unaccompanied children. Here is UNICEF in its own words.
Wired magazine ran a piece today about the Hexayurt, a six-sided structure designed to be cheap, durable, and easily assembled. It’s not a new design; it was created years ago by Vinay Gupta and promoting it has been a longstanding project for him. However, the Wired article suggests a new and interesting use for the Hexayurt – emergency housing in Haiti.