COVID-19’s Staggering Toll on Education Around the World Joanne Lu May 29, 2020 After decades of hard work to get kids into primary schools, the COVID-19 pandemic has now pushed education back to “global levels not seen since the 1980s,” the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said in a new re...
How Will COVID-19 Impact Africa? The WHO Releases Pandemic Projections Joanne Lu May 12, 2020 So far, COVID-19 hasn’t hit Africa as hard as other regions, but a new study by the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts the worst of the pandemic is yet to come for the continent, and it may “smolder” for ...
What Will COVID-19 Do to the Sustainable Development Goals? Joanne Lu April 17, 2020 The economic impact of COVID-19 could increase global poverty for the first time in three decades, pushing more than half a billion people – or 8 percent of humanity – into poverty, according to a new paper pub...
The UN Has a “Global Roadmap” to Defeat COVID-19. Will Countries Follow It? Joanne Lu April 7, 2020 Late last week, the United Nations published a global “roadmap” to defeat COVID-19, including a new $1 billion trust fund for low- and middle-income countries, where the impacts are expected to be far worse onc...
Massive swarms of desert locusts are devouring their way through East Africa. The UN is very worried. Joanne Lu February 19, 2020 Massive swarms of desert locusts are devouring their way through East Africa and have just made landfall in South Sudan, the country’s agriculture minister announced on Tuesday, sparking fears of a severe food ...
There Has Been a Staggering Increase in Hunger in the Sahel Region. Violence and Climate Change are to Blame Joanne Lu February 5, 2020 While the world’s attention is turned to the coronavirus outbreak, three UN agencies warned on Tuesday about another crisis that has been looming in the background: an alarming hunger spike in Burkina Faso, Mal...
In the New UN Human Development Report Norway Tops the List as the Country With the Highest Quality of Life Joanne Lu December 11, 2019 Compared to 20 years ago, the world’s poorest are doing far better. But millions of people are still anxious about their present conditions and future prospects; and they’re taking to the streets in Hong Kong, ...
The Most Food Insecure Countries in the World, Ranked Joanne Lu November 5, 2019 With just 10 more years to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, 43 countries in the world are still facing “serious” levels of hunger, and five have hit “alarming” or “extremely alarming” levels. That’s a...
How a vaccine scare caused polio to re-emerge in the Philippines after 19 years Joanne Lu October 15, 2019 Nineteen years after polio was officially eradicated in the Philippines, the incurable disease has made a resurgence due to widespread fears about vaccines. On September 14, health officials in the Philippin...
