Health and Population

The Trump administration and its allies in the US Congress have again refused to end their severe restrictions on aid to health programs for women globally, including a repeal of the global gag rule. A protest in the US, above, to protect women’s reproductive rights. CREATIVE COMMONS
For the third year, the Trump administration and its Republican allies in the United States Congress are refusing to abandon their harsh restrictions on aid to health programs for women around the world.

The “Chernobyl” tapestry by a Belarusian artist was gifted in 1991 to the United Nations in New York, five years after the cataclysmic nuclear explosion in Ukraine, which also affected Belarus and Russia. Decades later, the world is still unable to fully turn its back on nuclear power in all its forms. 
The third floor of the United Nations headquarters in New York is coveted real estate for member states that have donated art to the organization.

The lives of women are falling into separate camps internationally: those who live in the wealthiest industrial nations, with progressive laws on abortion, and those in developing countries, where nonprofit health clinics are closing and women have fewer choices. In Nepal, above.

Critical needs arrive for the 45,000 or so Syrian refugees stuck in Rukban camp, near the Jordan border, with most residents women and children. A new bill from the US House of Representatives may overturn Trump-Pence policies that deny women and girls in poor nations and conflict zones access to reproductive health care. UNHCR

In a refugee camp in South Sudan, people escape the fighting in the country’s civil war, including rampant rape by militias and national armed forces. Members of the UN Security Council are drafting a resolution to strengthen such victims’ rights, but the United States is refusing language on sexual and reproductive health services. GEOFF PUGH

In 2015, only three African nations made the top 10 globally in numbers of Christians in the population: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia, about 216 million Christians total. The continent is projected to hit 727 million Christians by 2060, with Nigeria leading. Here, schoolgirls in Sierra Leone. 

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are meant to improve the lives of everyone universally, but the system tracking their progress is showing flaws resulting from politics and a heavy reliance on numbers. Women offering food at Cuba’s Independence Day celebration, Caimito, 2015. JOE PENNEY
Serious flaws in the system for tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals have been uncovered in a newly published collection of stunning, provocative research by eminent developing policy specialists.

A World Bank report on foodborne diseases says food-safety regulations are most deficient in low-income countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, which can result in early deaths, especially among children. A dried-fish market in Kathmandu, Nepal, above.

Children in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have the highest rates of child deaths in the world, a new Unicef report documents, yet much progress has been made globally to reduce child mortality since 1990. Here, a boy in Dhaka, Bangladesh. FRANCISCO MAGALLON

The Trump administration recently circulated a memo to explain its strict anti-abortion policies globally, just as a new UN report on fertility found that severely limiting females’ access to health services increases abortion rates. Here, a Usaid-financed family planning program in Malawi, in 2015, included injectable contraceptives.