News headlines in March 2012, page 7

The 15,000 residents of this British Overseas Territory had always prided themselves on having perhaps the most reliable and efficient source of electricity in the Caribbean.

Like its Caribbean neighbours, Jamaica is looking for outcomes that will address its food security challenges when world leaders meet in Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Jun. 20 to 22.

The Druze stronghold of Sweida, Syria, witnessed several pro-democracy protests last week. While the movement remains marginal, it is charged with symbolism: the Druze have long been considered the 'spiritual cousins' of the Alawites, the religious group to which the Assad family belongs.

'It benefits both our finances and our health, because the vegetables help prevent illness while they nourish our children,' says Lesbia Huertas, standing in the middle of her yard filled with containers sprouting vegetables in Palencia, 28 km northeast of the Guatemalan capital.

When the secretary-general of the United Nations recently said that failing to invest in the one billion young people of the world 'is a false economy', he certainly had more in mind than just a useful business idea.

The births of tens of thousands of children during Côte d'Ivoire's eight-year rebellion were not formally recorded. Providing these children with birth certificates is one of the mundane yet vital challenges facing the authorities as they work to re-establish the country's public administration.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) have jointly launched a high-level commission to improve access to essential but overlooked health supplies that could save the lives of millions of women and children every year.

Recent shifts in the Middle East and North Africa have presented several economic challenges such as high unemployment, an exodus of migrants from Libya and a reduction of tourism revenues. Given that economic discontent played a vital role in the Arab uprisings, economic growth has become vital to sustain the fruit of revolution.

Hamza has memories no 17-year-old should. 'I was desperate. I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't want to go outside the house. I was very nervous. I'd be irritated with the simplest matters.'

Sahara Bibi, a 47-year-old poor Muslim woman living on one of the climate- impacted islands of Eastern India’s fragile Sundarbans archipelago in West Bengal state, was forced to pull her two young sons out of school and send one of them to the Southern state of Kerala to earn a decent income.