Vicky Hallett

If you thought your 2016 was looking busy, just be glad you're not the United Nations. The organization will be marking 129 "International Days" — not to mention assorted weeks, decades and a year.

Looking over the list is overwhelming but also enlightening. It's clear certain dates are more ...

This year, prepare to have your awareness raised. And raised. And raised. And then raised some more.

At least, that's the goal of the United Nations' packed calendar of "observances" — days, weeks, years and decades — dedicated to subjects deemed worthy of the world's attention. But what was once ...

For a glimpse of what's happening in Africa, Guggenheim Bilbao curator Petra Joos recommends watching a film called "The End of Eating Everything."

The eight-minute work by Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu introduces viewers to a snake-haired character. This figure floats through bleak scenery, encounters a flock of birds ...

All eyes turned to Mali in the aftermath of the November 20 terrorist attack on a Bamako hotel that left more than 20 people dead.

The Malian capital was hoping to attract attention for a much different reason. On October 31, it welcomed the opening of the African Biennale ...

For the developing countries at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris, it's more than a chance to talk. It's a chance to be heard — and their representatives are taking advantage of the world stage by airing their grievances and proposing potential fixes.

How these specific demands will be ...

People in matching shirts collecting supplies to send overseas. Attractive singers coming together to perform a song with patronizing lyrics. Various shots of forlorn people.

It's all in the 2012 music video "Radi-Aid: Africa for Norway," encouraging Africans to collect radiators to send to sad, freezing Norwegians. ...

They gave it a shot. Actually, several hundred million shots. But despite lofty goals set by the World Health Organization to eradicate measles in four of its six regions by 2015, the disease continues to sicken — and kill — children around the world.

That's not to say all the ...

Is coffee part of your morning routine? Then you need to thank the millions of people who make the drink their life's work.

Celebrated photographer Sebastiao Salgado takes readers deep into that grind with his latest collection, The Scent of a Dream: Travels in the World of Coffee ...

Meet the genius who can't get out of school: Patrick Awuah, a former Microsoft engineer who moved from the United States back to his native Ghana to establish the nation's first liberal arts college. The 50-year-old founder and president of Ashesi University College in Accra is one of 24 ...

In October 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating for girls' education. She marked the first anniversary of the attack by releasing her memoir, I Am Malala. A year after that, she was named the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate ever. This month, ...

The tiny nation of Nauru is only 8.1-square miles, and home to a population of 10,000. But in the world of public health, this Pacific island looms incredibly large.

It was in Nauru, in the mid-1970s, that researchers first identified a vexing problem that has since spread just about everywhere: ...

When Henry Wanyoike and Joseph Kibunja first started running, it was out of necessity. The childhood friends had no other way to travel the three miles from their Kenyan village to school. So they made the barefoot trek every day, in both directions, regardless of weather.

Thirty years later, Wanyoike ...

Nick Stadlberger, a fourth-year medical student at Dartmouth College spent four weeks this spring in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, working in the infectious disease ward at Muhimbili Hospital as part of his school's global health program.

Each day began at the gates of the hospital, where Stadlberger watched people ...