The human population has lived a rural lifestyle through most of history. The world's population, however, is quickly becoming urbanized as people migrate to the cities. In 1950, less than 30% of the world's population lived in cities. This number grew to 47% in the year 2000 (2.8 billion people), and it is expected to grow to 60% by the year 2025...
[University of Michigan, Global Change Program]

With ever greater numbers of people on the move in search of jobs and opportunities in the Mekong River region, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has unveiled a series animated videos to inform and warn migrant workers about the risk of HIV/AIDS. The videos - developed especially for use in Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos - target young people from rural villages, who usually have scant knowledge of HIV as they set out in search of a better life in booming industri more...

One in six Iraqis is displaced. After a conflict which has now lasted as long as the First World War over two million Iraqis are in exile and a further two million are internally displaced. Most refugees are in Syria and Jordan - which hosts the largest number of refugees per capita of any country on earth…

This special issue of Forced Migration Review (FMR) – published in English and in Arabic - assesses the scale of the displacement and highlights the inadequacy of current responses. more...

Virtually every humanitarian agency talks about their commitment to building – or enhancing – Southern capacity. Surprisingly, however, the call for papers for this issue of Forced Migration Review (FMR) did not produce the flood of articles that was expected. Perhaps this says something about lack of fit between rhetoric and reality? Do international agencies still define 'capacity building' in a way which implies that Southern recipients have no capacity to start with? Is the capacity-buil more...

Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, August 24, 2007. Young women and girls in Asia who are trafficked for commercial sex work are emerging as an HIV/AIDS risk factor, according to a report released by the United Nations Wednesday at the 8th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, the AP/PR-Inside.com reports (Nessman, AP/PR-Inside.com, 8/22). The conference brings together more than 2,500 delegates from Asian countries to discuss fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS, as well as providing tr more...

"An increasing percentage of trafficking victims in Moldova being married women is thought to be linked to a corresponding rise in family members and friends becoming part of the trafficking process, according to IOM. In an annual statistical profile of trafficked victims assisted by IOM in Moldova, partly used to reveal new trends, the Organization found that more victims were describing 'recruiters' for trafficking networks as people they were close to, including family members... "Traffickin more...

This issue of Population Reference Bureau's Population Bulletin highlights key findings from the 2007 World Population Data Sheet. Topics covered include, world population, malnutrition, the environment, HIV/AIDS, migration and urbanization. The 2007 World Population Data Sheet and a related policy brief are also available from PRB at: (http://www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2007/2007WorldPopulationDataSheet.aspx).

[Population Bulletin, Vol. 62, No. 3, September 2007; Population Refere more...

"Malnutrition plays a role in the deaths of about 16,000 young children every day, virtually all of them in the developing world. That is a yearly toll of almost 6 million, about the same as the population of Denmark, Jordan, or Laos. The Population Reference Bureau's 2007 World Population Data Sheet and two companion reports offer detailed information about the prevalence of malnutrition worldwide, and its causes and consequences. These reports also highlight information about cost-effective s more...

This new website was recently launched by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). It lets internally displaced people tell their life stories – in their own words. Visitors can either read transcripts or listen to the testimonies of displaced Colombians to learn about the impact of forced migration on peoples' lives.

The narratives in these pages are valuable complements to the official information on conflicts which governments and international organisations offer. The storie more...

This article reports findings from a study which piloted a workplace-based intervention to promote contraceptive use in unmarried female migrants working in privately owned factories in China. The intervention included lectures, information leaflets, and support to the factory doctors in providing a contraceptive service.

[By: Xu Qian, Helen Smith, and Wenyuan Huang, et al. BMC Health Services Research, Volume 7, Article 77, 2007]