Colosseum at the Prayer with the Pope and the representatives of the workd’s religions. Credit: Elena L. Pasquini

ROME, Nov 7 2022 (IPS) – Arms are raised, stretched out towards the sky, holding white cards with the word peace written in different languages. A girl, a refugee from Syria, reads the Rome’s Appeal for peace : With firm conviction, we say: no more war! Let s stop all conflicts […] Let dialogue be resumed to nullify the threat of nuclear weapons.” Pope Francis singed it in front of the people gathered at the Colosseum, holding the word “peace” in their hands, as representatives of the world’s religions did as well. Shortly before, members o…

Emina Cerimovic is a senior disability rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Shahd, a 12-year-old girl with a hearing disability, stands in front of a window facing her father, in the house her family live in, Azaz, Aleppo, Syria. Credit: Human Rights Watch.

NEW YORK, Feb 28 2023 (IPS) – A few days ago, I saw a shared to Twitter of Sham, a young Syrian girl rescued from under the rubble in northwest Syria, sitting upright in her hospital bed, According to the Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer humanitarian group also known as the White Helmets, Sham will lose both her legs because of injuries from the quake.

Looking at her photo, I couldn’…

Credit: United Nations

KATHMANDU, Nepal, Aug 10 2022 (IPS) – The upcoming summit on Education, part of the UN Secretary General’s ambitious agenda, can truly bring accountability and participation to the inevitably new ways education will be imparted in the future.

With scorching temperatures, uncontrolled flames and floods devastating our planet, millions of people are realizing that we are all going to pay a high price for climate inaction.

The current climate crisis is furthering compounding the other emergency that is still affecting all of us, a public health crisis fully exposed by the Covid pandemic.

Amid this gloomy scenario, the internat…

A man and a woman in front of the Beirut Port, Lebanon, following the blast. Courtesy: UN Women Arab States/Dar Al Mussawir

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 29 2021 (IPS) – Lebanon must “shield and preserve” the skills, knowledge, and experience of its people in order to move forward with its development, according to Christophe Abi-Nassif, the Lebanon programme director for the Middle East Institute (MEI).

“Shielding and preserving whatever is left of Lebanon s human capital should be the main policy-making concern at the moment,” Abi-N…