In August 2013, Josephine Majani, a mother of three from Bungoma County in Kenya, endured a harrowing birth experience. Despite her repeated pleas for help during labor, the nurses in the hospital ignored her. She struggled to walk to the labor ward while in intense pain, but all of its beds were occupied. Majani was forced to give birth on the cold concrete floor. Subsequently, nurses there subjected her to verbal and physical abuse—even making her carry her placenta back to the labor ward.

Over the last four decades, contracting HIV has been transformed from a fatal diagnosis to a manageable chronic illness. Political will and financial commitments have reduced new HIV infections worldwide by 39 percent since 2010. However, much work still is needed to meet global targets of preventing new cases of HIV and reducing AIDS-related deaths. Marginalized communities, including women and girls, face countless barriers which hinder progress towards comprehensive HIV prevention across the planet.

Pronatalism, the push for women to have more children, has elbowed its way into prominence in public discourse. In the United States, cultural and institutional pressures on women to bear children are articulated in various ways, from negative portrayals of women who don’t consider having a child a viable choice for themselves, to a burgeoning Silicon Valley subculture that advocates having “tons of kids” to save the world, to policy proposals that would further restrict reproductive choice or limit the voting power of the childless. The stigmatization of people without children and the recent rise in contemporary pronatalism is a global phenomenon.

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program 

Over 40,000 Protest for Maori Rights in New Zealand (Al Jazeera) 

Earlier this month, the libertarian ACT New Zealand party introduced the Treaty Principles Bill in that nation’s legislature. The controversial measure seeks to reinterpret the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi—a foundational document that granted Maori tribes broad land rights in return for ceding governance to the British. The treaty’s historical value remains significant to this day, and it is a contemporary reminder of the colonial injustices faced by the country’s native tribes.

Maternal health among adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remains a largely unexplored and frequently neglected area within the public health field. Adolescent birth rates remain disproportionately high in LMICs, accounting for approximately 97% of all adolescent births globally. The prevalence of child marriage, poverty, gender-based violence, and limited access to and utilization of contraceptive methods all contribute to this startling statistic.

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program 

Global Water Stress May Create a Food Crisis (Guardian) 

In its recent report, The Economics of Water, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water examined world hydrological systems and their impact on water availability—and warn of imminent shortcomings in food production. The study asserts that the demand for freshwater will outweigh the supply by 40% in 2030, highlighting a significant shift in previous freshwater requirement estimates. 

A recent study from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and its partners found that women and girls of African descent living in the Americas are up to three times more likely to die from preventable maternal death causes. So it is no surprise that UNFPA’s Executive Director of Programs, Diene Keita, is calling attention to this challenge.

Each day, almost 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. A maternal death occurs every two minutes. Maternal mortality is defined as the death of a woman from complications of pregnancy or childbirth that occur during the pregnancy or within 6 weeks after the pregnancy ends.*