At a crowded corner of the Tripoli Medical Centre, people gather every morning to submit paperwork for medical treatment abroad, or worriedly scan new lists of approved names plastering the walls.

A new report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) Friday contends that the dearth of meaningful reform in the protection of human rights and the rule of law in Yemen threatens political stability as the fledgling transitional government copes with a deteriorating economy and continued violence.

One of the lesser-known catalysts of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings was a global grain crop failure in 2010, caused by drought and flooding that year from Russia to Canada.

While the U.S. candidate for World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, still has the inside track, the two non-U.S. candidates, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo, have been raking in high-profile endorsements.

Ties between Turkey and Iran appear to be headed downward in the wake of Tehran's statement earlier this week that it would prefer not to hold the negotiations with the P5+1 group on its nuclear programme in Istanbul, as had been announced last week by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton.

On her first visit to Brazil, the United Nations humanitarian affairs chief Valerie Amos stressed the need to take advantage of this country’s experience in disaster response and the fight against poverty.

In his keynote address to the Global Colloquium of University Presidents at New York's Columbia University last week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke of the growing power exercised by the world's younger generation in an age of high- speed technology and the information superhighway.

Only a small proportion of women in the region whose rights are undermined achieve full access to justice, says a collective of women’s organisations from eight countries of Latin America.

Teenage pregnancies are on the rise in Guatemala, along with the drop-out rate in schools, family breakdown and many other related social ills.

As armed groups have captured Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, the three largest cities in northern Mali, the differences within the alliance have begun to emerge. There are reports of rape and looting in Gao, while in Timbuktu an Islamist faction, Ansar Dine, has announced the imposition of sharia law.