Issue 420 of New Internationalist

Reader-owned global journalism

March 2009

March 2009

50-year-old Mabinty Conteh and her 18-month-old granddaughter Isatu are from Sierra Leone. Mabinty is holding up a photo of her daughter, who died giving birth to Isatu at the age of 20. Women in Sierra Leone have a 1 in 8 lifetime chance of dying in childbirth. The risk for women in Ireland, meanwhile, is 1 in 47,600.

The gulf between the Global North and the Global South is greater on this than on any other indicator – and progress towards this Millennium Development Goal is all but non-existent. Yet, as this month’s issue of the NI explains, everybody knows how these women’s lives could be saved. So why the hell is nobody doing anything about it?

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In this issue

  • It is half a century since the Dalai Lama and thousands of other Tibetans were forced into exile by the Chinese occupation. *Nick Harvey* talks to exiles young and old about their hopes for their country.

  • The countries where mothers are most (and least) at risk

  • *Rowenna Davis* meets a guard and an inmate from the notorious US prison camp in Cuba.
  • A brief history of Tibet
  • Visitors to Kuala Lumpur could be forgiven for thinking that they have landed in a highly developed nation. But hidden from the casual visitors’ view are the urban slums, crammed high-rise lowincome housing, rural villages still in poverty.
  • Why are so many women still dying in childbirth? *Chris Brazier* explains how they could be saved.