Photo credit: Stuart Ramson for UN Foundation It’s almost unfathomable to recall that in January 2012 the zero draft of the Rio+20 Outcome Document contained only two broad (and weak) mentions to health. Strong advocacy, hard data, and high-level political commitment resulted in a final outcome document with multiple references to health, with strong language stressing that health is a precondition for, an outcome of, and an indicator of all three dimensions of sustainable development. […]

Photo credit: UN Development Programme   In the run up to December’s Paris climate conference, when the United Nations’ 193 member states are expected to reach a new agreement on climate change, countries have developed and submitted national action plans that outline their efforts to fight climate. On Friday, the UN released a report analyzing the collective impact of those plans. Here are four highlights from the report and why these national plans matter. 1.

Washington’s National Zoo has about 1,800 animals. Imagine the outcry if human activity contributed to the loss of more than 900 of them. While the zoo hasn’t suffered such a drastic fate, the rest of the world has. According to World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report, global populations of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and birds declined 52% between 1970 and 2010. One species – Homo sapiens – is largely responsible for this loss. We are

Saturday, November 7 will mark 53 years since the world lost an inspiring leader and major UN supporter, Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt was the “First Lady of the World,” according to President Harry S. Truman. She served as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, as well as the first Chairperson of the UN Human Rights Commission in 1946. She was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, presenting it to

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on the Energy Access Practitioner Network website. We spoke with Sameer Hajee, co-founder and CEO of Nuru Energy, which has developed a one-of-a-kind offgrid recharging platform, the Nuru POWERCycle ™ pedal generator. The POWERCycle ™ provides clean, sustainable power to recharge both mobile phones and the Nuru Energy portable modular LED light, which can be fully recharged in 20 minutes, with each light providing up to ten days of light

Editor’s Note: This post from Mayra Buvinic and Megan O’Donnell originally appeared on the Center for Global Development blog. We are dealing with a sexist data crisis. We know that poverty hits women and girls hard, but current data cannot precisely measure their poverty independently of that of families or households. As ONE Campaign executive director Jamie Drummond pointed out this week in his talk, “Factivism, Feminism, and the Sexist Data Crisis,” at Web Summit,

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home.” There is no place closer to home than a woman’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Yet today, 225 million girls and women who want to delay or avoid becoming pregnant are not using modern contraception, often because they lack access to services and information. We must do better – both because women have the right to

Editor’s Note: Peter Yeo, UN Foundation Vice President for Public Policy and Advocacy, is traveling this week in South Sudan to observe the work of the United Nations in protecting civilians and their health. South Sudan remains at a critical juncture in the implementation of August’s cessation of hostilities agreement. This week, I had the chance to visit a United Nations camp in Juba, South Sudan housing over 10,000 civilians fleeing conflict. Months of hostilities

Today, the World Health Organization announced that 17.1 million lives have been saved from 2000 through 2014 thanks to measles vaccination. To put that into perspective, during each day of 2014, more than 1,100 children who would have died of measles in 2000 could go to school, play, spend time with their families, and grow up because they were vaccinated against measles. Measles vaccination has been a leading contributor to progress on Millennium Development Goal