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“Childhood Must Never Be Derailed by Motherhood”: Dianne Stewart on UNFPA’s ‘State of the World Population 2013’
›Twenty thousand girls under the age of 18 give birth each day, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Two million girls age 14 or younger give birth each year. Societal norms often frame adolescent pregnancy as the result of promiscuous behavior, but this year’s State of the World Population Report encourages “a shift away from interventions targeted at the girl toward broad-based approaches that build girls’ human capital, protect girls’ rights, and empower them to make decisions,” says Dianne Stewart, director of the information and external relations division of UNFPA, in this week’s podcast.
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Challenging Patriarchy: The Changing Definition of Women’s Empowerment
›As more organizations in the international development community commit themselves to supporting women’s empowerment, it has grown increasingly difficult to evaluate what that really entails. [Video Below]
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Critical Mass? How the Mobile Revolution Could Help End Gender-Based Violence
›The past three years – and more pointedly the past 12 months – have laid witness to monumental, if not heartbreaking, incidents of gender-based violence. The gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi last December; the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl left for dead in a pit latrine in Western Kenya last June; the mass sexual assault of women in Tahrir Square during the 2011 revolution in Egypt and since; all were high profile atrocities that ignited outrage around the world.
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Gender Gaining Ground at Climate Change Negotiations
›Last month, more than 10,000 negotiators from 189 countries attended the latest UN climate change conference, known as the 19th Conference of the Parties, or COP-19, this year held in Warsaw. To many, COP-19 fell frustratingly short of its already low expectations: there were no significant new agreements and 132 developing countries along with many major non-government groups staged a walkout in protest. However, it was notable for several signs of continued progress in bringing women’s voices to the negotiating table.
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Jay Gribble: For Demographic Dividend, Invest in Health, Education, and Governance
›Developing countries with youthful populations may have the opportunity to take advantage of a phenomenon called the “demographic dividend,” when a decline from high to low fertility rates leads to slower population growth and a large working age population. But “age structure alone isn’t going to make it happen,” says Jay Gribble of Abt Associates in this week’s podcast.
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Dark Forests: Interview With Bopha Phorn on Investigating Land Deals, Logging, Gender Issues in Cambodia
›Cambodia is a young democracy in transition. It has the highest rate of urbanization in Southeast Asia, but the lowest percentage of current urban dwellers and widespread poverty. The Mekong River, on which millions of rural Cambodians rely, is being dammed at a rapid pace, both upstream, beyond the country’s borders, and within. Aided by weak land laws, both foreign and domestic industrial forces have staked claim to large swaths of the country for logging and rubber plantations, displacing thousands.
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Roger-Mark De Souza on Illuminating the Connections Between Population Dynamics, Resilience, Conflict
›“When you look at the resiliency literature, there’s very often discussion around population and population dynamics, but no one ever knows what to do with it,” says ECSP Director Roger-Mark De Souza in this week’s podcast.
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How Effective Are International Efforts to Empower Women? Alaka Basu on Challenging the Patriarchy
›“Everyone uses the word ‘empowerment.’ It’s now such an overused word,” says UN Foundation Senior Fellow Alaka Basu in this week’s podcast. “You are empowered if you have a choice of 10 different shampoos in the grocery store; you are empowered if you have 100 kinds of cereals to buy; you are empowered by virtually anyone wanting to sell you something.”
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