FOREIGN REPORTING
Indian women are taking charge of transit to steer female riders through a dangerous world
In a country where sexual-assault rates are staggeringly high and women’s work force participation is low, attention is turning to the hazards of transportation
CBC Radio: Child Marriage in Madagascar
Despite a law against it, girls are still married off as young as 13 and 14. Their bodies are damaged by pregnancy, and their prospects are dimmed by poverty.
How a White House reversal affects a village in Madagascar
AMPAHO, MADAGASCAR—Ampaho feels like the edge of the world, somewhere most people, even in Madagascar, will never go.
The community of 240 small bamboo huts sits along a slow-moving waterway not far from the shore of the Indian Ocean on Madagascar’s east coast. The trip from the capital, Antananarivo, to Ampaho takes two days by car along the country’s winding roads followed by a meandering voyage on a rustic boat through the Panagalane canal.
Trump changes to foreign aid restricting access to family planning services in poorest countries
Women in some of the poorest countries in the world are already feeling the effects of the Trump administration's sweeping changes to foreign aid, and the impact will only widen, advocates say.
The reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy will lead to unintended pregnancies, maternal deaths and even more poverty, says one of the world's largest family planning organizations.
The plague is spreading rapidly in Madagascar, which already had highest number of cases worldwide
Elisah Raharimalala and her daughter wear face masks as they make their way around the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo, a city of more than a million people. They're wearing the mouth and nose coverings to protect themselves not from air pollution or the common cold but from the plague, a disease that in the West is more commonly associated with the Middle Ages.
"We are worried because we live in the less-pleasant part of the town," said Raharimalala. "Our place is clean, but in the communities around us, there are dead rats."
End to "confusion and fear"? Madagascar set to update colonial-era family planning laws
ANTANANARIVO, Oct 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Safidy is a 17-year-old who lives in Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo. She and her boyfriend didn't use contraception, they didn't know where to find it and didn't have the money to pay for it.
When she became pregnant she sought help to end the pregnancy. Abortion is illegal in Madagascar, but clandestine terminations are performed regularly in the Indian Ocean nation.
"The doctor assured me that it will work and we trusted him," said Safidy, who did not want to reveal her full name. "(But) I had pain, I bled." She eventually needed to seek medical care for complications.
Campaigners say if young people in Madagascar had better access to contraceptives many unsafe abortions could be prevented. About 10 women on the island die each day due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth, including terminations, according to the U.N. population agency UNFPA.