“There are more young people in the world today than in any other time in the history of the world,” said Beza Tesfaye, Senior Researcher at Mercy Corps, at a recent event at the U.S. Institute of Peace on Mercy Corps’ efforts to engage youth in Somalia and Afghanistan in order to promote stability and prevent violence. “As we know, marginalized youths are the ones often to be recruited into violent movements. Not only do we have to focus on conflict, but we also have to put youth at the center of development programs to address these issues.”

“There is a close relationship between fertility rates and health on one hand, and economic growth on the other,” said Peter McPherson, President of the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities and former USAID Administrator, at the final event in a three-part series on the role of population and family planning in supporting economic growth, health, and education.

“Resilience isn’t an outcome, it is a process—and capacity-building is crucial,” said Chelsea Keyser, Deputy Chief of Party for USAID’s PREPARED program, during a recent event at the Wilson Center marking the end of the five-year project. PREPARED (Planning for Resilience in East Africa Through Policy, Adaptation, Research, and Economic Development) developed 14 different tools to help communities adapt to the impacts of the changing environment in the East African region, including unreliable rainfall and rising temperatures.

In many parts of South and Southeast Asia, high population density and vulnerability to climate change combine with low levels of household resilience and poor governance to increase security concerns and the potential for political instability. To help identify risks and hotspots in this critical region, the Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia (CEPSA) program at the University of Texas-Austin recently launched the Complex Emergencies Dashboard, which integrates raw data and modeling with mapping technology, allowing users to visually analyze regional security issues. The project was funded by the Department of Defense’s Minerva Initiative, which also supported similar work by the university’s Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) program.

“Over 130 million girls around the world are not in school through no fault of their own,” said Her Excellency Joyce Banda, former president of the Republic of Malawi, at the launch of her new book, From Day One: Why Supporting Girls Aged O to 10 Is Critical to Change Africa’s Path, at the Center for Global Development.

As India faces an emerging cancer crisis, how do South Indian women conceptualize what causes reproductive cancers—and how to cure them? New qualitative research from Cecilia Van Hollen, a medical anthropologist and Wilson Center Public Policy Fellow, illuminates the complex perceptions and personal experiences of women in Tamil Nadu, the first state to integrate cancer screening into its primary health care system.

As the UN High-Level Forum on Sustainable Development continues this week, member states and civil society are taking a hard look at countries’ progress toward securing safe drinking water, sanitation, and adequate housing. Achieving these and the other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires recognizing the synergies among them—including the role that reproductive health and family planning can play. You may ask, “Why does family planning matter for the SDGs not related to health?” The answer is that it is one of the most cost-effective investments for achieving the SDGs. Increasing access to family planning provides sweeping social, economic, and environmental benefits for every dollar spent.