It’s been 14 years since the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 acknowledging women as important agents of change in recovery from conflict and peacebuilding generally. But between 1992 and 2011, only four percent of signatories in 31 major peace processes around the world were women, and only 12 out of 585 peace agreements referred to or made provisions for women’s needs in the reconstruction process.

“A world in which a quarter of humanity is denied full enjoyment of their rights is an unjust world,” said Kate Gilmore, deputy executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). “It’s a world without the building blocks for human progress, for human peace, for human security.” [Video Below]

The culmination of five years of work by three working groups comprising hundreds of scientists around the world, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment was released in parts throughout this year. A newly released synthesis presents their findings in one document.

The 69^th UN General Assembly was “an absolutely extraordinary opportunity” to rethink global development, said Genevieve Maricle, a senior policy advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Social and Economic Council (ECOSOC) who participated in the summit. [Video Below]

Imagine you are a physician working in a rural health center in a developing country. You’re helping a woman deliver her baby, and it’s just arrived but is not breathing. Meanwhile, the mother has started to hemorrhage. You’re the only one working in the clinic that day, and many life-saving treatments need to start within one minute. You have 60 seconds to make decisions that could cost the lives of two people. [Video Below]

Mass displacement has become a significant feature of recent conflicts, as the number of people forced to flee their homes has passed 50 million worldwide, a level not seen since World War II. This is one of the reasons why the UN Security Council will focus on women refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) during its annual open debate on women, peace, and security on October 28, according to Elizabeth Cafferty, senior advocacy officer at the Women’s Refugee Commission.

“Half of the world’s population is under 30 – any development agenda would have to address their needs, including their health needs, as part of accomplishing development goals,” said Jennifer Adams, deputy assistant administrator at USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, at the Wilson Center on September 24. [Video Below]

Seasoned demography geeks know to anticipate the release of the UN Population Division’s World Population Prospects in the spring of odd-numbered years. An off-cycle update published last month in Science, summarizing new results and methodological changes to the projections, therefore provoked a buzz of interest and a mini-flurry of media coverage.