I woke up on Thursday, the UN's first International Day of the Girl, wondering how Malala Yousafzai is doing. In critical condition, she was shot by the Taliban for her courageous defense of human rights -- specifically, a girl's right to an education.

I received a message...

A new report from the World Bank brings welcome news on the global poverty front.

Despite the worldwide recession of the late 2000s, the total number of people living in extreme poverty has actually gone down in recent years -- so much, in fact, that we've reached...

It's heartening to see philanthropists like Bill Gates and celebrities like Matt Damon raising awareness of the fact that more people in the world now have a mobile phone than have a toilet. As we celebrate International Women's Day on March 8, let's not forget that girls and...

How do we address the looming problem of youth unemployment in the developing world? The question was top of mind Monday at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, where the UN gathered experts and government representatives in a livestreamed conference at its New York headquarters, an event

The UN has chosen today as a symbolic one on which the world's 7 billionth person might be born. The fact that it's Halloween is, as The New Yorker jokes, "presumably just a coincidence."

In the ideal world, reaching that psychological threshold would be seen as success...

A ripple of laughter spreads through the room during Beatrice's prayer. We're in the town of Nansana, in central Uganda, taking part in a meeting of 25 micro-borrowers, all of them local women. Somebody translates: "Dear Lord, please make us strong and successful," Beatrice said before the group, before adding:...

I was heartened to learn Friday morning that the Nobel Committee had awarded this year's Peace Prize to Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia's current president, and the bold Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee, two women I admire tremendously for their pivotal role in advancing the cause of peace in Africa.

The Republic of South Sudan is born, on July 9th 2011, amidst much celebration, dollops of hope and a real undercurrent of apprehension. As the festivities commence in Juba and trappings of nationhood like a flag, new currency and national anthem are unveiled, it is the approximately eight million South...

This morning, I received a touching letter from Munshi Sulaiman about his recent trip to Pakistan to see BRAC's Ultra Poor program there. Munshi has been working with BRAC for the last 8 years and currently coordinates BRAC's research activities outside Bangladesh.

Imagine if Hurricane Katrina struck all the states from Florida to Massachusetts and massive floods washed away homes and businesses, destroyed roads and bridges, and devastated the lives of tens of millions of Americans. How would we react in the immediate aftermath? How quickly would we respond to the urgent...

With the heavy rainfalls and the ensuing flood in Pakistan, BRAC temporarily halted its microfinance and health operations in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and is focusing on providing emergency relief. Drawing upon years of experience in flood relief work in Bangladesh, a flood-prone country, BRAC Pakistan staff are rapidly and effectively assisting the...

On Monday, I had the opportunity to speak at Star Island's 2010 International Affairs Conference on the rock shoal of Star Island off the coast of New Hampshire. It was a very moving experience as I got the chance to interact with a unique group of people -- generations of...

While the UN says that the world is on track to reach the first Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015, progress toward goal #5, to reduce maternal mortality by 75% by 2015, remains the target for which progress has been most disappointing. While there...

Traveling around Juba on deeply rutted, dusty, red, dirt roads in over 100 degree heat makes one realize the importance of clean drinking water. Though the mighty Nile river runs through southern Sudan, people still live without enough water. Women and girls spend hours a day fetching water from community...

At the end of August, BRAC's founder F. H. Abed, the head of BRAC International, Aminul Alam and I visited Haiti to explore ways we could deepen our work there.

Only 680 miles off the Florida coast, Haiti is considered the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with approximately 80%...

"I want to become a dancer...in New York," said the girl with dreamy eyes. Dressed all in white, she was sitting with perfect posture in a defiantly confident pose.

In another setting her statement would sound like an ordinary ambition for a teenage girl...

BRAC began operations in Pakistan in 2007, looking to replicate its successes in Afghanistan and in Bangladesh. I recently visited Karachi, Lahore, Rajindrapur, Islamabad and the Peshawar region of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province to see BRAC's microfinance and new education programs and to discuss the start up of a pilot...