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SAVING WEAK After years of initiatives and policies, the human trafficking industry works because it’s financially viable, writes Simran Kohli In 2010, the General Assembly adopted the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, urging Governments worldwide to take coordinated and consistent measures to defeat this scourge. The Plan calls for integrating the fight against human trafficking into the UN’s broader programs in order to boost development and strengthen security worldwide. One of the crucial provisions in the Plan is the establishment of a UN Voluntary Trust Fund for victims of trafficking, especially women and children. In 2013, the General Assembly held a high-level meeting to appraise the Global Plan of Action. Member States also adopted a resolution

YOUTH SKILLS On this July 15, the United Nations (UN) would be celebrating the 4th World Youth Skills Day (WYSD). On 18 December 2014, the United Nations General Assembly adopted by consensus, a resolution led by Sri Lanka, declaring 15th July as the World Youth Skill Day. Sri Lanka initiated this resolution to highlight, at a global level, the importance of youth skills development. Youth is that stage of a person’s life where the decisions one makes, the actions one takes, the education and training one gets plays a crucial role in his future. Youth, as it is rightly said, is the future of any country. People in their youth are the leaders of tomorrow and therefore, it is essential

CSR PROFESSIONAL Progressive, passionate about achieving excellence and encouraging the team to constantly learn, Dr Nuzhat Ali is looking after Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) portfolio at Aricent, which is a global design and engineering company innovating for the digital era. She believes that CSR is to visibly contribute to larger societal welfare as a proactive, accountable and socially receptive unit to the immediate world around it. The CSR Act has created this opportunity which may leverage change for the betterment of the society and enabled an ecosystem to contribute towards the national/international development commitments. In her current profile at Aricent, Dr Nuzhat is responsible for some of the most innovative employability enhancement projects designed to strengthen the engineering domain, improve

ARCHIVE For more than 150 years now, the hearing impaired across the world have been looking forward to Gallaudet University not just for higher education but also research and innovation in sign language and newer technology to help the hard of hearing lead a smooth and respectable life.   Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel,” said Socrates. Every individual has this flame deep within and education stimulates it. Gallaudet University is for more than 150 years now kindling flames within deaf and hard of hearing students from across the world. Students from the United States and more than 25 countries, coming from diverse backgrounds, having varied ambitions and communicating in different languages, congregate

ANALYSIS Emissions reduction is at the core of global diplomatic action for the last three decades and 2017 marks the 20th anniversary of the notorious Kyoto protocol. Read through the first part of this article to know about the progress made so far and mitigation actions taken while we are busy promoting sustainability efforts.   Adifference of only 2 degrees of Celsius today separates mankind from an impending natural disaster. This temperature increase above pre-industrial levels is estimated to occur over the next 30 to 50 years. In a few generations, mankind has created more damage than millions of years of natural history. Climate change is the most significant threat our world is facing, increasingly crucial for forums such as

ARCHIVE Public sector Enterprises are now slowly trying to exit areas where it is not competitive and drain on resources and public exchequer. At the time of independence in 1947, India had just five central public sector enterprises with an investment of mere Rs 29 crore. Besides, perhaps India had fairly reasonable network of railways and extensive Posts and Telegraph covering the entire country to serve the British masters. Today India has 320 central public enterprises with investment of around Rs 12 lakh crore. As many as 165 CPSEs earned a net profit of about Rs 1.5 lakh crore and 78 CPSEs, a net loss of Rs 29,000 crore. There is, perhaps, double the number of state public enterprises. The

ARCHIVE Fluoride Water Testing Can Save India From Crippling Bone Disease, reports PRIYANKA TOMAR.   With drinking water in 14,132 habitations in 19 States still containing fluoride above the permissible levels, a huge population in the country is at risk of serious health conditions such as skeletal fluorosis, as per the data of Health Ministry. Data collated by the ministry earlier reveals that Rajasthan has the highest number of such habitations (7,670), affecting 48, 84,613 people. Telangana has 1,174 such districts with 19, 22,783 affected people. Karnataka has 1,122 such districts and Madhya Pradesh 1,055. Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh too face the problem. The World Health Organization guideline value for fluoride is

ARCHIVE Twenty-five years after global scientists issued a “warning to humanity” about dangers to the environment, a new update released last month says most of the planet’s problems are getting “far worse.” In 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the 1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” They issued a grim “warning to humanity.” Within, they explained that human activities were doing serious, irreversible damage on the planet that, if left unchecked would eventually make the planet uninhabitable. The scientists then listed all of the ways that the Earth was suffering on account of humanity, from ozone depletion to exploitation of water supplies to