The 2019-2023 Strategy for UNU-IIGH, developed in
2018, built on UNU-IIGH’s strategic advantage and
position vis-à-vis
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the UN and global health ecosystem.
The Strategy set a goal to advance evidencebased policy on key issues related to sustainable
development and health and shifted the Institute’s
body of work from investigator-driven global health
projects to three priority-driven, policy-relevant pillars
of work, each reflecting UNU-IIGH’s unique value
position.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the
Institute adapted and reprioritised its areas of work
while continuing to deliver on the main strategic
objectives of translating evidence to policy, generating
policy-relevant analyses on gender and health, and
strengthening capacity for local decision making
especially in the Global South.
The new strategic plan encompasses four work packages:
1. Gender Equality and Intersectionality: through this work, we will aim to improve the quality of health care through a human-centred approach, by ensuring the health system is responsive to the needs of structurally excluded individuals and communities; and by advancing a positive and enabling environment for the frontline health workforce—e.g. addressing the experience of gender-based violence.
2. Power and Accountability: through this work, we will catalyse equitable shifts in power and address key accountability deficits that prevent the equitable and effective functioning of the global health system and prevent adequate responsiveness to the needs of states and populations in the Global South.
3. Digital Health Governance: through this work, we will address the colonial legacies and power asymmetries that negatively impact robust digital health governance, identify ways to strengthen health data governance with a particular focus on SRHR and promote diversity in technology design and development.
4. Climate Justice and Determinants of Health: through this work we will leverage UNU-IIGH's position within the UN and network of UNU institutes, network experts, practitioners, policy-makers, and academics to advance evidence-based policy on the different dimensions of the climate emergency and its impact on health.
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Continuing a worrying decade-long rising trend, the number of people forced to flee due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order climb
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ed to 89.3 million by the end of 2021. This is more than double the 42.7 million people who remained forcibly displaced at the end of 2012 and represents a sharp 8 per cent increase of almost 7 million people in the span of just 12 months. As a result, above one per cent of the world’s population – or 1 in 88 people – were forcibly displaced at the end of 2021. This compares with 1 in 167 at the end of 2012. During 2021, some 1.7 million people crossed international borders seeking protection and 14.4 million new displacements within their countries were reported. This is a dramatic increase from the combined 11.2 million a year earlier.
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The second edition of the WHPCA Global Atlas of Palliative Care was launched during World Hospice & Palliative Care Day 10 October. The Atlas is an
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update of the original WHPCA/WHO Global Atlas of Palliative care at the end of life published in 2014. It is full of useful facts and figures to support palliative care advocacy and development. In this edition we have switched from using the WHO methodology for need for palliative care to the evolving Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and Pain Relief methodology. As a result the number of people needing palliative care has gone from 40 million per year to almost 57 million and more accurately reflects the need for palliative care globally models of palliative care worldwide? What resources are devoted to palliative care? What is the way forward?
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The Global Appeal provides updated information for government, private donors, partners and other readers interested in UNHCR's priorities
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and budgeted activities for 2021 to protect and improve the lives of tens of millions of people of concern (refugees, internally displaced people, stateless persons and others)
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Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2012
Reports from Kenya, Sierra Leone, China
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and Sri Lanka
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The ECA, says over 300,000 Africans could lose their lives due to COVID-19. This, as the pandemic continues to impact on the Continent’s struggl
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ing economies whose growth is expected to slow down from 3.2 percent to 1.8 percent in a best-case scenario, pushing close to 27 million people into extreme poverty.
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Society first acknowledges a child’s existence and identity
through birth registration. The right to be recognized as
a person before the law i
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s a critical step in ensuring
lifelong protection and is a prerequisite for exercising all
other rights. A birth certificate is proof of that legal identity, and is
the basis upon which children can establish a nationality,
avoid the risk of statelessness and seek protection from
violence and exploitation. For example, proof of age is
needed to help prevent child labour, child marriage and
underage recruitment into the armed forces. A birth
certificate may also be required to access social service
systems, including health, education and justice.
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The need for a roadmap for risk assessment stemmed from the lack of standardised
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and systematic effort to national risk assessment effort to date. The road map details the process, activities necessary for each step and the availability and accessibility of technical and financial resources, and coordination mechanisms for the implementation f a national risk assessment.
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Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, health is receiving unprecedented public and political attention. Yet
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the fact that climate change also presents us with a health crisis deserves further recognition. From more deaths due to heat stress to increased transmission of infectious diseases, climate change affects the social and environmental determinants of health in ways that are profound and far-reaching. The fundamental interdependency of human health and the health of the environment is encapsulated in the concept of planetary health, a scientific field and social movement that has been gaining force since the 2015 publication of the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission report “Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch”.
We see an urgent need for strategic communication to raise awareness of climate-health synergies in order to overcome the misperception that climate and health are two independent agendas. The fragmented and sector-focused nature of thinking and action remains a significant barrier to integrating health considerations into climate planning and project development. Inevitably, collaboration across sectors requires a community of practice. Despite recent efforts focused on the climate-health nexus, much work remains to be done to translate scientific findings for policymakers, mobilise climate financing resources in support of health co-benefits, and promote genderjust solutions within climate change projects.
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More than three months since the start of the war in Ukraine, people globally are facing a cost-of-living crisis not seen in more than a generation, with escalating price shocks in
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the global food, energy and fertilizer markets - in a world already grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.
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In the region, it is estimated that there are over 650 million persons with disabilities. However, without accurate, timely and disaggregated data, countries are unable to develop effective policies
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and programmes, monitor the wellbeing of persons with disabilities and evaluate the equity and impact of development efforts. This endangers country commitments to ‘leave no one behind’ and undermines their obligations to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
This groundbreaking report demonstrates the importance of ensuring data is inclusive and provides recommendations for immediate action in order to improve the collection, analysis and reporting of disability data. We hope this report will be used as a tool for future advocacy and ultimately better data for all.
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Asia is home to more than half of the world’s 1.1 billion girls. Gender inequality in many parts of the region means that girls are often systema
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tically disadvantaged and oppressed by poverty, violence, exclusion and discrimination. Girls’ development is hampered by child, early and forced marriage and high adolescent pregnancy rates. Across the region, genderbased violence against girls and women constitutes a serious and widespread rights violation, particularly with regard to domestic violence, marital rape, and trafficking in women and girls.
Emerging data shows that since the outbreak of COVID-19, violence against girls and women, particularly domestic violence, has intensified
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This technical brief was developed by the UNFPA Global Ageing Network to complement the UN Department of
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Economic and Social Affairs' (UN DESA) Issue Brief: Older Persons and COVID-19, which emphasized the humanitarian imperative of addressing older persons' specific needs within preparedness and response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Policy Brief
November 2014
Reducing the global suicide mortality rate by a third by 2030 is a target of both the UN Sustainable Development Goals
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and the WHO Global Mental Health Action Plan. However, an impediment to meeting this goal is the fact that suicide and suicide attempts remain illegal in at least 23 countries worldwide. Decriminalization of suicide and suicide attempts represents one critical step governments can take in their efforts to prevent suicide. The WHO Policy Brief on the health aspects of decriminalization of suicide and suicide attempts cites data and research to make a case for decriminalizing suicide globally. It also includes case examples from countries that have recently decriminalized suicide and suicide attempts — Guyana and Pakistan, Singapore,— providing important insights to policy-makers, legislators, parliamentarians and other decision-makers.
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The report “Build back fairer: achieving health equity in the Eastern Mediterranean Region” provides ground breaking insights into the state of
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health inequities in the Region and urges countries to take action to address the social determinants of health to reverse the worsening trend of inequity – aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing conflict, mass movements of people, environmental challenges, gender inequities and unemployment.
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Guidance for Asia Pacific National Societies.
This document provides guidance for
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Asia Pacific National Societies on how to include migrants and displaced people in COVID-19 preparedness and response activities.
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