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Contributor Guidelines
Submitting guest blogs is open to Global Washington’s members of the Atlas level and above. We value a diversity of opinions on a broad range of subjects of interest to the global health and development community.
Blog article submissions should be 500-1500 words. Photos, graphs, videos, and other art that supports the main themes are strongly encouraged.
You may not be the best writer, and that’s okay. We can help you shape and edit your contribution. The most important thing is that it furthers an important conversation in your field, and that it is relatively jargon-free. Anyone without a background in global development should still be able to engage with your ideas.
If you include statistics or reference current research, please hyperlink your sources in the text, wherever possible.
Have an idea of what you’d like to write about? Let’s continue the conversation! Email comms@globalWA.org and put “Blog Idea” in the subject line.
Posted on August 11, 2014
By Michelle McMillan
Establishing a food-secure world is one of the major challenges at the forefront of international development as the pressures of population growth, climate change and urbanization have steadily increased. The World Health Organization maintains that food security exists “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.” This includes both physical and economic access to food that meets dietary needs. Food security remains a highly complex issue, linking health, the environment, economic development and trade.
The world’s population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050. Many governments have begun to remodel their approach to ensuring access to food and are developing programs that highlight the importance of strengthening supply chains and eliminating food waste. Nutrition has also become a focus of the global development agenda as both malnutrition and obesity cause serious health problems in addition to economic ones. The challenge of food security comes with a number of controversial issues, such as genetically modified crops, land grabbing, corruption and conflict. Continue Reading
Posted on August 4, 2014
By Hannah Atlas
For Michael Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS, an AIDS- free world should look like this:
- Voluntary testing and treatment for everyone, everywhere.
- Each person living with HIV achieving viral suppression.
- No one dies from an AIDS-related illness or is born with HIV.
- People living with HIV live with dignity, protected by laws and are free to move and live anywhere in the world.
That world felt far away during the minute of remembrance held at the opening session of the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia in late July to mourn the colleagues lost in the Malaysian Airways crash. The tragedy killed a leading AIDS researcher and others headed to the conference from Amsterdam. Continue Reading
Posted on July 28, 2014
By Gailyn Portelance
July 11 was World Population Day and no region of the world is feeling the impact of demographic change like sub-Saharan Africa. More than half of the growth predicted by 2050 is expected in this region, where the number of people is set to more than double, from 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion. Within the same period, Nigeria’s population is expected to surpass that of the United States. Of course, sub-Saharan Africa is not the only region to experience this phenomenon, as the most rapid increases are expected in the world’s 49 least developed countries1. However, what makes the region unique is the growth of its overwhelmingly young population.
According to the World Bank, 62 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, more than 600 million young people, is below the age of 25, and this population also represents three-fifths of the region’s unemployed. Its share of the world’s working-age population (ages 15-64) is set to double from about 10 percent in 2010 to about 20 percent in 2050 – to 1.22 billion people2.
Continue Reading
