His father was marched to a forest and killed, like so many victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Before he was led away, the father told his young son, Uon Chhin, to stand up and speak the truth, even if it might compromise his liberty. Decades later, Mr. Uon Chhin became a journalist during…
The United States is ending its financial support for family planning programs in developing countries, cutting nearly 50 million women off from access to contraception. This policy change has attracted little attention amid the wholesale dismantling of American foreign aid, but it stands to have enormous implications, including more maternal deaths and an overall increase…
Aid is pouring into Myanmar following the powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake that devastated the country on Friday, resulting in at least 1,700 deaths and thousands more injured. However, it is widely believed the final toll will be much higher because of poor communications networks and the fragmentation of the country that has resulted from years of…
China, Russia and India have dispatched emergency teams and supplies to earthquake-ravaged Myanmar. So have Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. The United States, the richest country in the world and once its most generous provider of foreign aid, has sent nothing. Even as President Trump was dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, he said that…
When she finds it hard to focus, Nilab jots down her worries on slips of paper and pins them to her wall, a strategy she picked up in a seminar on mental health at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. She makes a mental note to deal with the issues at a scheduled time…
When President Joseph R. Biden Jr. convened democracy summits at the White House in 2021 and 2023, he pointedly disinvited President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a man he had once described an “autocrat” who deserved to be driven from office by voters. On Tuesday, President Trump offered a much rosier assessment of the Turkish…
Myanmar’s long isolation and its internal instability are likely to complicate the global humanitarian aid response to the earthquake that struck on Friday, despite a rare plea for outside help from the country’s military-dominated government. “We need and want the international community to provide humanitarian aid,” said the military spokesman, Gen. Zaw Min Tun. “We…
The Trump administration intends to terminate the United States’ financial support for Gavi, the organization that has helped purchase critical vaccines for children in developing countries, saving millions of lives over the past quarter century, and to significantly scale back support for efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest killers globally. The administration has…
A senior official at the main U.S. aid agency, which is being dismantled by the Trump administration, told employees to clear safes holding classified documents and personnel files by shredding the papers or putting them into bags for burning, according to an email sent to the staff. The email sent by Erica Y. Carr, the…
Dalvin Modore walked as if there was broken glass beneath his feet, stepping gingerly, his frail shoulders hunched against the anticipation of pain. His trousers had become so loose that he had to hold them up as he inched around his small farm in western Kenya. Mr. Modore has tuberculosis. He is 40, a tall…