“Is it cultural imperialism for Westerners to oppose [female] genital mutilation? Yes, perhaps, but it’s also justified. … But it is clear that the most effective efforts against genital mutilation are grass-roots initiatives by local women working for change from within a culture,” Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times column, which describes in detail “the most extreme form of genital mutilation” (5/11).

More than 1,100 women are raped every day in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to a study published on Tuesday in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health, Agence France-Presse reports.

“More than 8,000 people – representatives of governments, international agencies, development partners and civil society – are attending the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV), outlining a plan to lessen the burden of poverty, hunger and disease on the world’s most vulnerable people,” Inter Press Service reports (Ngozo, 5/10).

Actress Julia Roberts will serve as a global ambassador for the Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and join Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s effort “to introduce 100 million clean cookstoves around the world by 2020, the State Department said Friday,” Agence France-Presse reports.

U.N. officials, recognizing the International Day of the Midwife on Thursday, lauded the efforts of midwives worldwide and “called for greater investment to ensure their life-saving services are available to all who need them around the world,” the U.N. News Centre reports.

U.S. Experiencing High Number Of Measles Cases, Most Linked To Other Countries The U.S. is on track to record more measles cases this year than in the last decade, with nearly all of the cases linked to other countries, including those in Europe, where more than 6,500 cases have been reported…

U.S. Government Must Continue To Support Maternal And Child Health When Mother’s Day is recognized on Sunday, “let’s honor motherhood itself by giving all moms the gift they want most – the chance to deliver and raise healthy children,” former Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), who serve…

The U.N. Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health on Monday concluded a meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and announced a new set of recommendations aimed at improving the accountability of women’s and children’s health programs in the developing world, PANA/Afrique en ligne reports.

War Should Not Be An Excuse For Development Aid Once again, Save the Children’s State of the World’s Mothers report has ranked Afghanistan, where one in 11 women die of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, the worst place in the world to be a mother, which “is not surprising,”…

Afghanistan is “the worst place to be a mother, with women having a life expectancy of 45 years – the world’s lowest – and one of every 11 women dying in childbirth,” according to Save the Children’s annual State of the World’s Mothers report, the Associated Press/Seattle Times reports.