"Innovative approaches such as 'weapons for development' and 'weapons for food' programmes are yielding concrete results as practical disarmament measures at the community level." (UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan)

The numbers are self-explanatory. In 1800, only three percent of the world’s population lived in cities. 2007 was a milestone in human history: for the first time ever, more people on earth lived and worked in cities than in rural areas. The UN estimates that the proportion of city-dwellers will climb to 61 percent by 2030, pushing up urban population from three billion today to a total of five...

BACKGROUND WHO develops evidence-based guidelines for setting global standards and providing technical support to its Member States and the international community, as a whole. There is a clear need to ensure that WHO guidance is relevant, rigorous and up-to date. A key activity is to ascertain the guidance needs of the countries. This study provides an international comparison of priority guid...

My lightening visit to the Wilton Park conference on "Women Targeted by Armed Conflict: What Role for Military Peacekeepers?" last Wednesday was a real eye-opener. Since this trip was sandwiched between International Peacekeeping Day [1] on Thursday and Tuesday's release of a new report by Save the Children UK [2] showing that girls and boys in conflict-affected countries such as Sudan, the Ivo...

restaurants. Japan consumes about 80 per cent of Pacific and Atlantic bluefin tuna. The country has been accused of stifling efforts to enhance protection of the tuna stocks. In negotiations last year, a bid by Monaco, backed by several other European countries, to introduce a ban on commercial fishing of Atlantic bluefin tuna failed because of perceived support from several smaller nations for...

European Atomic Forum European Confederation of Agriculture International Air Transport Association International Cargo Handling Co-ordination Association International Chamber of Commerce International Commission on Radiological Protection International Committee on Radiological Units and Measurements International Confederation of Free Trade Unions International Co-operative Alliance Internat...

Luis Sambo, Margaret Chan, Steve Davis, Anthony Lake, Seth Berkley, Cyrus Poonawalla, and Christopher J. Elias World Health Organization, Regional Office for Africa, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo; World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland; PATH, Seattle, Washington; United Nations Children’s Fund, New York, New York; Gavi, Geneva, Switzerland; Serum Institute of India Ltd, Pune; and Bill ...

Over the past half century, two major demographic phenomena have risen to prominence: population ageing and international migration (United Nations, 2005). It has recently been estimated that there are over 200 million international migrants in the world (International Organization for Migration, 2008). This comprises around 3 per cent of the current world population (U.S Census Bureau, 2008). ...

BACKGROUND The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were 'top-down' goals formulated by policy elites drawing from targets within United Nations (UN) summits and conferences in the 1990s. Contemporary processes shaping the new post-2015 development agenda are more collaborative and participatory, markedly different to the pre-MDG era. This study examines what would the outcome be if a methodolog...

Effectively measuring comparative developments in crime and justice trends from a global perspective remains a key challenge for international policy makers. The ability to compare crime levels across countries enables policy makers to determine where interventions should occur and improves understanding of the key causes of crime in different societies across the globe. Nevertheless, there are...