News stories by Marguerite A. Suozzi

Human rights groups are expressing outrage over a decision to proceed with the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences, named after and funded by the controversial president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.

Friday marked the last day of the two-week Ninth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, with attendees expressing optimism but also concern about the ongoing encroachment of industrial and development projects into native lands.

In 2002, world leaders committed to reduce the rate of global biodiversity loss by 2010, but the date has come and gone for these commitments to be fulfilled.

While aboriginal peoples represent approximately five percent of the world's population, they are 10 percent of the world's poor, according to a new World Bank report on 'Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Development'.

A modest protest gathered outside the Permanent Mission of Brazil in New York on Wednesday to oppose the controversial Belo Monte dam project in Brazil.

It was a historic moment for the United Nations when, 10 years ago, the Security Council unanimously recognised 'the intrinsic role of women in global peace and security' through Resolution 1325, said Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh at a panel at the U.N. Thursday on the continuing obstacles to its implementation.

One day closer to an ever-approaching deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced a Joint Action Plan to improve reproductive, maternal and newborn health on Wednesday, flanked by international leaders and development experts.

The problem now, almost, is to find a way to relive the peak of that economic crisis of September 2008. The current move back to business of old — on the face of it anyhow — could well turn out to be a longer-running difficulty than the crisis it supposedly left behind. A difficulty far greater for women than for men.

Women's rights and development activists working in Haiti say that greater attention must be paid to the immediate needs of women and girls, as well their role in the long-term reconstruction of the devastated country.

New vaccination programmes against rotavirus are starting to have a positive impact, and could eventually prevent hundreds of thousands of child deaths a year, according to a new report.