This is the time of year when I — probably like you — can’t help but think about all the things I’m thankful for. The list always starts out with the tried-and-true standards of good health, a loving family, and the comforts of modern life — a cozy home, a working car, a fridge full of Coke Zero. Learn more »
Rosalynn Carter mental health journalism fellow Orla Ryan details her exploration of psychosis and schizophrenia treatment among young people in Ireland. Learn more »
A solid century of life is worthy of a big celebration, and that’s what transpired in the days surrounding former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday on Oct. 1. Learn more »
Zarie Riley has one simple piece of advice for the Carter Center’s interns: “Say yes to as much as you can.” Learn more »
The foremost journal of tropical medicine in the United States has published a supplement honoring the public health legacy of former President Jimmy Carter and the late First Lady Rosalynn Carter. In a demonstration of technical expertise and the respect The Carter Center carries in that field, the supplement features 16 articles authored or co-authored by Carter Center experts. Learn more »
The Carter Center has a hard-earned reputation as a fair, impartial observer of elections overseas. It brought its electoral expertise to a U.S. election for the first time by observing Georgia’s post-election risk-limiting audit in 2020, and its domestic focus has grown ever since. Learn more »
Helping countries control or eliminate diseases is no easy feat — helping them do so when they’re in the midst of armed conflict is exponentially more challenging. Learn more »
Humankind has been battling Guinea worm disease for millennia, and since the 1980s, The Carter Center has been leading the charge to rid the world of this parasite. Incredible progress has been made in recent decades. Learn more »
In July 2023, Carter Center donors were invited to send messages of gratitude to human rights defenders, expressing appreciation for their courage and dedication. Over 1,275 supporters sent heartfelt notes of thanks and encouragement. Learn more »
Last November, we lost one of our leading lights with the passing of the Carter Center’s trailblazing co-founder, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Learn more »
I have three messages for journalists writing about mental health: Words matter. Images matter. You matter. Learn more »
In honor of World Malaria Day, The Carter Center celebrates the Dominican Republic Ministry of Health, which received a 2023 Malaria Champions of the Americas prize from the Pan American Health Organization for its notable progress in eliminating malaria in Los Tres Brazos neighborhood of the capital, Santo Domingo. Learn more »
I met Gary Mason right after the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that shocked the country: “Tom, this looks terribly familiar, so it does,” he said in his Belfast accent. “What can we do?” Learn more »
Maria de los Santos has had enough of malaria. De los Santos, who operates a tiny community bank in San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic, experienced fever, chills, and a less common symptom, severe itching, during a bout with the mosquito-borne illness. She kept the bank open and continued to look after her family despite being sick with a potentially fatal tropical disease. Learn more »
It was many years ago, but Mercedes Sola remembers when her illness came on. She was 30 years old and pregnant with her third daughter. Learn more »
Guinea worm once infected 3.5 million people every year. Thanks to heroes like Makoy Samuel Yibi, that number dropped to 14* last year. Learn more »
With a boost from the Carter Center’s Inform Women, Transform Lives project, the city of Washington, D.C., threw a big baby shower in the spring of 2023 to connect moms with agencies that can help make their lives a little easier. Learn more »
Thousands of admirers from all walks of life honored former U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died at home in Plains, Georgia, on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96. Learn more »
“Human rights are the foundation of everything that The Carter Center does,” Susan Marx said. “This program is the moral voice reminding us why we’re doing all of this: It’s because of dignity. Everybody has the right to dignity.” Learn more »
Being an election official is hard. Not only is there a never-ending stream of deadlines, but there also is a constant crush of complaints and criticism that sometimes escalates to stalking or death threats. Learn more »
Published by Tonya Wichman, director of the Board of Elections in Defiance County, Ohio.
I am an election official in rural Defiance County, Ohio. The way politics are in America right now, my job is very challenging much of the time. Last year, I almost quit. I needed a fresh perspective. Learn more »
The quest for health among neglected people is marked by daily acts of heroism. Take Lodai Peter Linus’ actions. Learn more »
Romain Ravet
As the #COP28 goes on, much of the talk in Kinshasa is about a “country solution” role for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in international climate governance, a concept offered by the World Bank, which has merits in making resource-rich countries more visible in climate governance, but also poses some questions. Learn more »
The Carter Center observed or prepared to observe elections in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Liberia this year and continued to work on improving the political atmosphere in the United States. Learn more »
The Carter Center sent a large contingent to the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), held Oct. 18-22 in Chicago. Learn more »
I recently returned from a visit to the nation of Chad, the central point of our fight against Guinea worm disease. As you may know, The Carter Center has been working to eradicate this devasting parasitic disease since 1986, when cases around the world numbered almost 3.5 million a year. Learn more »
Micah Fink will never forget the day his teenager, Sydney, asked him, “Dad, is it normal for so many kids to be thinking about killing themselves?” Though he found the question alarming, he didn’t know quite how to respond. He shied away from an in-depth discussion, hoping these thoughts were temporary. Later, he realized that his response shut down what could have been an important conversation. Eventually, he decided to broach the topic further. Learn more »
From the time she was little, Stacia George knew two things: She wanted to help people, and she was going to travel to the Congo. Learn more »
Laetitia Muabila Bangu-Bangu wants to help women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo find their voices. Learn more »
By Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center Board of Trustees
I made my first visit to Zambia, where our goal was to learn more about the Carter Center’s ongoing democracy programming that helps women, youth, and persons with disabilities overcome barriers to getting involved in political affairs and to travel into the Zambian countryside, where the Center is piloting a project to help rural communities address the effects of climate change. Learn more »
By Olivia Starks, Carter Center communications intern
During each internship session at The Carter Center, the interns take a day trip to former President Jimmy Carter’s hometown of Plains, Georgia. This is a staple of the internship program, as the visit is discussed on the first day of orientation. We are told stories about the delicious peanut butter ice cream and the fun downtown shops that await us. Learn more »
Seven countries reported finding Guinea worms in either humans or animals last year. Chad reported the highest numbers by far. Learn more »
The Carter Center recently sent election teams to the United States, Tunisia, and Brazil. Each situation was different, each required a distinct approach, and each had a unique result. Learn more »
The Carter Center and The Center for Public Integrity have partnered with newsrooms across the country to bolster news coverage on mental health access and parity. In the Q&A that follows, program manager Nora Fleming explains the Mental Health Parity Collaborative and its impact so far. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer of The Carter Center
The announcement in February that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the Carter Center’s co-founder, was entering hospice care touched my heart. It prompted reflections on how the Center has grown and evolved while remaining true to our founders’ original vision. Learn more »
Emmanuel Zulu is a young political activist in Zambia with strong convictions and sturdy shoes. In November 2021, Zulu embarked on a nine-day, 255-mile walk from his hometown of Chingola to the capital city of Lusaka to raise awareness about government accountability; transparency; and inclusion of youth, women, and people with disabilities in civic decision-making. Learn more »
By Eve Byrd, Director, Mental Health Program
It is human nature to want to be understood and accepted, so when people like Rosalynn Carter and her family share their experiences with dementia, they provide a comforting connection to the more than 55 million people worldwide who have dementia diagnoses. Learn more »
From community engagement to water treatment and filtering to dog tethering, a cluster of villages in remote western Ethiopia is applying creative strategies to protect humans and animals from Guinea worm disease, and their diligence is paying off.
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Abeer Pamuk had just started her sophomore year at the University of Aleppo when the Syrian civil war erupted.
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Written by Jennifer Roberts, North Carolina Democracy Resilience Network
Many thanks to the League of Women Voters of North Carolina for recognizing the work of the bipartisan N.C. Trusted Elections Tour, organized by myself and Bob Orr and funded by The Carter Center. Our close partnership with the League of Women Voters in this endeavor guaranteed its success and helped pave the way for safe, secure, and peaceful elections in our state in 2022. Learn more »
By Makoy Samuel Yibi, Director, Guinea Worm Eradication Program, South Sudan Ministry of Health
Makoy Samuel Yibi first met former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1995, after which they formed a strong relationship. In 2008, Yibi received the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Award for Guinea Worm Eradication for his leadership in reducing cases of the disease in what is now South Sudan. He wrote the following elegy for his mentor and hero. Learn more »
The Carter Center has a long history in Sudan — in fact, 70% of the country’s population hadn’t even been born when we started working there. Learn more »
Life is hard enough in Haiti, with its profound poverty, natural disasters, and troubled political history. Add to the mix an insidious tropical disease that causes permanent disfigurement, and the result is misery that defies description.
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Jude Musa, 13, from a small community in Nigeria, stood proudly in 2016 as he received a dose of anti-parasite medicine. It was part of a ceremony marking the 500 millionth treatment The Carter Center has helped distribute to fight neglected tropical diseases. Learn more about the celebration and NTDs from our archives. Learn more »
The Carter Center is the official observer of Mali’s peace agreement, keeping track of the steps each side takes to implement the pact. From our archives, meet two women in Mali who sent their children far away to keep them safe until lasting peace comes to their land.
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The Carter Center is inviting the public to send messages of peace and comfort to President Carter and his family via an online portal, and the response is overwhelming. As of 2 p.m. Tuesday (Feb. 21), more than 7,919 messages had been published, with waves of them continuing to arrive. Learn more »
Many schoolchildren in Georgia don’t have the mental health resources they need. Fortunately, they have Ellen Eldridge to let the world know about the problem. Learn more »
Mulat Zerihun cares about the eyes and speaks from the heart. Learn more »
In 1986, Guinea worm disease afflicted an estimated 3.5 million people a year in 21 countries across Africa and Asia. In 2022, just 12 human cases were reported. Working closely with the countries and with support from donors and partners, The Carter Center leads the battle to eradicate the disease. Here are three stories from the frontlines. Learn more »
By Masa Janjusevic, Carter Center country representative, Myanmar
Myanmar is home to the world’s longest continuing civil war, spanning seven decades. The inevitable toll on mental health cannot be ignored, and recent events such as COVID-19 and economic decline have only intensified the unmet need for services. Learn more »
Sometimes doing the right thing makes people uncomfortable. When Regina N. Bee, a Carter Center youth information ambassador in Bong County, Liberia, told students that the country’s freedom of information law gave them the right to ask their principal about the status of their ID cards, the principal accused her of brainwashing them. Learn more »
By Eve Byrd, Director, Mental Health Program
From the vantage point of a richly resourced and powerful country or society, it’s easy to believe that colonialism is a thing of the past. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The sad fact is that the effects of a colonial mind-set are alive and well in some corners of the global health community. Learn more »
Last week, logic and accuracy testing of tabulation or counting equipment took place in all 15 Arizona counties ahead of the court-mandated recount of races for attorney general, superintendent of public instruction, and state representative of Legislative District 13 in Maricopa County. Learn more »
By Michael Scholtens, data analyst, Democracy Program
The turmoil at Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover has shaken the foundation of the global social media landscape. As one of social media’s pillars veers toward possible collapse, some of its users and content are scattering across the internet. It’s too soon to say whether Twitter will be unseated as one of the giants of social media, but users are searching for alternatives at a higher rate than at any point since the platform’s founding. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer of The Carter Center
This fall has been an exciting time at The Carter Center. We celebrated the anniversary of our founding 40 years ago, President Carter celebrated his 98th birthday, and we dedicated a 200-year-old Japanese bell on our campus. Learn more »
The Carter Center celebrated its 40th anniversary in October. We asked some of our long-serving staff members to share a favorite memory from their time at the Center. Learn more »
With political polarization and democratic backsliding in the United States showing no signs of abating, The Carter Center stepped up its U.S. election efforts in 2022. Learn more »
Grab your lunch and join us for 10-minute interviews with election experts on some of the most pressing U.S. election issues.
Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, Vice President, Health Programs, The Carter Center; Kelly Callahan, M.P.H., Director, Trachoma Control Program, The Carter Center; Dr. Emmanuel Miri, Nigeria Country Representative, The Carter Center; Dr. Zerihun Tadesse, Ethiopia Country Representative, The Carter Center
From the vantage point of a richly resourced and powerful country or society, it’s easy to believe that colonialism is a thing of the past. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The sad fact is that the effects of a colonial mind-set are alive and well in some corners of the global health community. Learn more »
In 2006, a relatively new development officer at The Carter Center, Madelle Hatch, took part in a career fair at Midvale Elementary School in an Atlanta suburb. Learn more »
In Myanmar, the overwhelming combination of political conflict, COVID-19, and economic decline has resulted in an unprecedented mental health crisis. So when Eh Wah,* a social worker who deals with vulnerable youth in Yangon, learned that The Carter Center was piloting a peer-to-peer mental health services support program, she jumped at the opportunity to participate. Learn more »
By Gregory S. Noland, director, River Blindness Elimination Program, and Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs, The Carter Center
World Sight Day is the second Thursday in October, and we at The Carter Center and our country offices are doing our part to preserve vision in vulnerable populations through our robust river blindness and trachoma programs. Learn more »
By Adam Weiss, Director, Guinea Worm Eradication Program
Some of the hallmarks of the four-decade Guinea worm eradication campaign, led by The Carter Center, are its agility, data-driven decision making, deep-rooted partnerships, and commitment to prioritize the needs of the endemic countries. Learn more »
By Johnny Ndebe, a national dispute resolution monitor for The Carter Center in Liberia
Last year, I was notified that a crowd of protesters had blockaded a bridge a few hours from Monrovia, Liberia, where I work as the national dispute monitor with The Carter Center. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer of The Carter Center
On September, 18, The Carter Center was honored to host one of Atlanta’s Equitable Dinners, a public event designed to inspire anti-racist action through art and courageous conversations. Events across the city brought together 5,000 guests of all backgrounds to sit at 500 tables to discuss racial equity. Learn more »
This October, The Carter Center will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its 1982 founding. Enjoy these highlights from four decades of work, benefitting millions of people around the world. Learn more »
By Kelly Callahan, director, Trachoma Control Program
Public health work is always challenging, but some seasons are more challenging than others. And wow, have the last three years been challenging — especially in the part of Ethiopia where the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program works. Learn more »
If you had a huge, stinking, bloated animal carcass—say, a horse or a buffalo—blocking the main street in your neighborhood, you probably could figure out who to call to do something about it. Learn more »
If you had a huge, stinking, bloated animal carcass—say, a horse or a buffalo—blocking the main street in your neighborhood, you probably could figure out who to call to do something about it. Learn more »
Catch a glimpse into the lives of a few of our interns. Learn more »
By Adalis Rojas, youth advocate and former Carter Center Mental Health Program intern
As many depend on the younger generations to advocate for youth mental health awareness, it’s important to know what you can do now to support. Learn more »
Municipal and regional elections don’t usually attract much interest outside the country where they’re taking place, but when Venezuelans went to the polls last November to choose their next governors and mayors, the world was paying close attention. Learn more »
By Nicole Kruse, Interim Vice President of Development
A family reunion of sorts took place last month in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was the annual Carter Center Weekend, when a limited number of friends and supporters gather to catch up with each other, hear from Center leadership and staff, and take part in various fun activities, including silent and live auctions. Learn more »
By Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center Board of Trustees
Jason Carter met with Col. Assimi Goïta to discuss actions taken toward the Mali Peace Agreement created in 2015 and eradication efforts of Guinea worm disease. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer of The Carter Center
We at The Carter Center are horrified by the devastation in Ukraine. As we have helped other nations to rebuild after wars, we will continue waging peace. Learn more »
We are down to the last mile in our mission to #DefeatGuineaWorm and are all set to welcome leaders from around the world to commit to #MissionZero. Learn more »
Just 15 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in four countries in 2021, the lowest number ever recorded. When The Carter Center started leading the global eradication campaign in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases in 21 countries. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer of The Carter Center
This month, I was pleased to sign the Kigali Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases, signifying the Carter Center’s 100% commitment to work with dozens of countries, donors, and organizational partners to tackle these terrible diseases Learn more »
Analysis by Hari Prasad, Program Associate, Conflict Resolution Program
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has had obvious effects on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but its current and potential destabilizing effects in Syria are not receiving the attention they desperately need. Learn more »
Barbara Smith, vice president of the Carter Center’s peace programs, says she was born to her line of work. Her mother is from Germany and taught her the value of international perspectives. Her father was in the military and ingrained in her the importance of service. Learn more »
The final bastion of river blindness in the Americas lies along the border of Brazil and Venezuela, where the nomadic Yanomami indigenous people reside in hard-to-reach, ring-shaped temporary communities in the Amazon rainforest called shaponos. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, Chief Executive Officer, The Carter Center, and Dr. Kashef Ijaz, Vice President-Health Programs, The Carter Center
We at The Carter Center are grieving the unexpected passing of our friend and colleague, Dr. Stephen B. Blount, who had only recently retired after a remarkable career in global public health. Learn more »
Mother's Day in the United States is May 8. Honor the special women in your life with a unique gift that will bring hope to the world's poorest and most neglected people. Now, for a limited time, you can send a special e-card with an original painting by Carter Center founder and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Learn more »
By Eve H. Byrd, Director, Carter Center Mental Health Program
During the 2022 state legislative session, the Georgia General Assembly voted unanimously to pass the Mental Health Parity Act, ensuring that the state will enforce parity in insurance coverage for behavioral health care for the first time. Learn more »
By Hampton Stall, Senior Program Associate, The Carter Center
After the Mozambique civil war ended in 1992, demining experts needed 23 years to clear the 86,000 unexploded weapons left behind. A just-released Carter Center report suggests that there could be more than three times that amount of unexploded ordnance in Syria, where demining efforts have yet to begin. Learn more »
By Kashef Ijaz, Vice President-Health, The Carter Center
There is nothing mysterious about tuberculosis (TB). It has been studied for a long time. We know who the vulnerable populations are, where it is prevalent, how to prevent it, and how to treat it. What is mysterious is the lack of top-tier attention and funding it gets.
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By Sarah E. Morris, head of instruction and engagement at the Emory University Libraries
The war in Ukraine is a terrible situation that is keeping many of us glued to our devices, looking for updates and ways to help Ukraine. Unfortunately, large amounts of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda are swirling around, creating confusion and disruption. Learn more »
The 33rd meeting, held March 14-15, 2022, at The Carter Center, focused on one of the leading causes of death by an infectious disease globally, yet paradoxically does not receive adequate attention: tuberculosis (TB). The ITFDE focus on TB was particularly timely as March 24 is World TB Day, whose theme this year — Invest to End TB, Save Lives — captures the urgency of the moment. Learn more »
Russia has long treated Ukraine as a proving ground for testing its novel and destructive cyberweapons. In 2015, Russia launched a cyberattack on the power grid in Ukraine, plunging 230,000 civilians into darkness and cutting off power to homes, hospitals, and schools in the dead of winter. Repairs took months to complete. Two years later, Russia launched another attack that crippled government, financial, and energy institutions, shut down nuclear safety monitoring systems, and permanently erased public and private data. The attack spilled over Ukraine’s borders, disrupting private-sector entities such as Maersk, FedEx, and Merck and costing an estimated $10 billion. Learn more »
Distributing medication to fight trachoma in Ethiopia’s Amhara region is challenging under normal circumstances. It’s a huge area with a large population and mountainous terrain. Amazingly, an estimated 14 million people in the region are treated with antibiotics for trachoma every year. Our Ethiopian colleagues have always been remarkably dedicated, but the complications of the coronavirus pandemic have really shown what they’re made of. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, Health Programs,
Haiti is frequently in the news for all the wrong reasons: devastating earthquakes, extreme poverty, rampant violent crime, political turmoil. The Carter Center is determined to bring Haiti hope in at least one way, in the area of public health. Learn more »
Fact checkers have a term for media sources that repeatedly share false or misleading content: misinformation repeat offenders. The Carter Center’s Digital Threats team studied the prevalence of misinformation repeat offenders in right- and left-leaning Facebook groups during the 2020 U.S. election cycle and published its findings in October in a report titled, "The Big Lie and Big Tech." Learn more »
As the sole medical resident at a small health outpost in 1991 rural Pakistan, Kashef Ijaz did it all. He saw 50 to 100 patients a day from a neverending line outside his office. He sutured wounds, delivered babies, helped control malaria. He once helped an elderly man who was convinced that Ijaz’s stethoscope could cure his arthritis. Learn more »
Seri village in Nigeria’s Plateau State marked World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day 2022 with a celebration that featured the lighting of hundreds of orange glow sticks. The village in Kanke Local Government Area joined about 100 other locales around the world that illuminated buildings and landmarks in orange to raise awareness of the fight against NTDs. Learn more »
The travel industry was one of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Business and leisure travel stopped abruptly and have yet to fully recover. While many of us wondered last year when we might take our next airplane trip to visit far-flung family and friends, those who work in the airline industry feared for their jobs and health. Learn more »
Jan. 30, 2022, marked the third annual World NTD Day, highlighting the global community’s commitment to ending neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) that cause immeasurable suffering among the world’s most marginalized communities. Together The Carter Center and our partners lit up the world as we celebrated hard-earned progress and took action to #EndtheNeglect and #BeatNTDs.
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Josh Griffin, a young consultant in the Carter Center’s Human Rights Program, participated in the 2020 March on Washington for racial justice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Standing at the foot of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Griffin heard inspiring words from several speakers, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s son Martin III and 12-year-old granddaughter Yolanda Renee King. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, Health Programs, and Gregory Noland, director, Carter Center River Blindness Elimination Program
The elimination of river blindness in Nigeria’s Plateau and Nasarawa states, as confirmed by a recent analysis, shows the value of partnership and persistence in the fight against neglected tropical diseases. Learn more »
Two and a half years ago, recognizing that things that take place in the online world were increasingly having real-world consequences, The Carter Center launched the Digital Threats to Democracy Project.
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After years of hard work and international cooperation, the onchocerciasis elimination programs of Brazil and Venezuela have confined river blindness to the smallest area yet in the Amazon Rainforest. The achievement comes despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer of The Carter Center
President Carter frequently reminds us of his high school teacher’s words of wisdom: “We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.” At The Carter Center, we practice this precept by holding fast to our founding commitments to defend human rights and relieve human suffering while continually seeking new and improved ways to accomplish our humanitarian goals. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
Only one human disease has ever been eradicated; that was smallpox, in 1980 — a tremendous victory for humanity. The term "eradication" is defined as permanent reduction to zero of the worldwide occurrence of infection caused by a specific pathogen, with no risk of its return. Learn more »
On Oct. 25, 12 days after this story was published, members of Sudan’s military seized control of the government. The Carter Center issued a statement condemning the coup and is now monitoring developments there. It remains committed to supporting the people of Sudan. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs, and Eve H. Byrd, director, mental health program
Journalists and the field of journalism are often criticized, in part because they have a habit of telling us truths we don’t want to know or discussing topics we don’t want to think about. But good journalists provide a public service by telling us things we need or ought to know and by making us think. What they write or say can affect the way society looks at an issue and educate people about available resources. Learn more »
Berihun Takele wants to do everything he can to help his community in Ethiopia’s Amhara region to thrive. Not only is he a kebele leader (similar to a village chief), but he also leads a team of volunteers who protect the village, called Wudi Gemzu, against river blindness by distributing medication and education and catching black flies for testing for the disease.
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By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer, and Kashef Ijaz, vice president, Health Programs
The 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly opens Tuesday, Sept. 14. It is a time of great anticipation as representatives of 193 member states come together in the great hall to discuss issues and set an agenda for the coming year. World political leaders, including President Joe Biden, will give speeches that will be closely watched for clues and outright declarations regarding a wide variety of international challenges, global health among them. Learn more »
Josh Griffin, a graduate assistant with the Carter Center’s Human Rights Program, participated in the 2020 March on Washington for racial justice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Standing at the foot of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Griffin heard inspiring words from several speakers, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s son Martin III and 12-year-old granddaughter Yolanda Renee King. Learn more »
This interview with President Carter was conducted in Spring 2020 and originally published in the Bush China Foundation’s 2019/2020 Annual Report. Learn more »
Regina Lotubai Lomare Lochilangole is a natural born motivator. She created an original song and dance to teach her South Sudan community about Guinea worm disease symptoms and prevention and rewards available for reporting suspected cases. The song was so effective that South Sudan’s Ministry of Health created a position for her within the Guinea Worm Eradication Program, titled Social Mobilizer. Lotubai now travels to different parts of the country to train other volunteers to become social mobilizers.
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By Susan Hunsinger, program associate, and Katie Conner, former senior program associate, mental health program
Rosalynn Carter is best known for her advocacy for mental health issues, caregiver issues, as co-founder of The Carter Center and founder of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. But there’s more to this "steel magnolia." Here are 24 facts about Rosalynn Carter. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
Completely wiping out a disease is nearly impossible. In all of history, only one human disease has been eradicated — smallpox, in 1980 after a herculean global vaccination campaign that took decades to complete. Polio persists (albeit in small numbers) despite the availability of a highly effective vaccine since the 1950s. Ditto measles. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs, and Barbara J. Smith, vice president, peace programs
Back in the turbulent 1960s, there was a popular poster — today it would be a meme on social media — that said, "War is not healthy for children and other living things." Learn more »
Grab your lunch and join us for 10-minute interviews with election experts on some of the most pressing U.S. election issues.
Learn more »
The Nigeria Public Health Training Initiative recently transitioned from a Carter Center-assisted project to state-level ownership in each of the six implementing states, including Akwa Ibom, Gombe, Imo, Ogun, Plateau, and Sokoto. Alhaji Abubakar Tambuwal, provost of the College of Nursing Science, Sokoto shares some insights about the innovative project and its impact on Nigeria’s capacity to train healthcare workers. Learn more »
The Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program reported just 27 human cases in six African countries in 2020, a dramatic 50% reduction from 2019. Guinea worm infections in animals also were down 20% from the previous year.
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By Christie Ethridge Diez, 2020-2021 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow
Christie Ethridge Diez is a reporter and anchor for Atlanta TV station at 11alive (WXIA) and a 2020-2021 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow. In late March 2021, she shared her story of loss, grief, and strength on the Carter Center’s Instagram account after her father’s Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis. Her moving posts, minimally edited, are reproduced here. All photos are courtesy of Christie Ethridge Diez. Learn more »
When new CEO Paige Alexander first saw the cafeteria in the Carter Center’s Atlanta office, paper shamrocks and pots of gold adorned the walls to mark St. Patrick’s Day. Only it wasn’t March. It was June 2020. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
Following on my commentary last month regarding health care capacity building at the community level, it’s fitting now to acknowledge our government partners’ eagerness and ability to exercise ownership of programs taking place within their borders. Learn more »
By Vanessa Scholtens, program associate, Trachoma Control Program
How do we know if a person has trachoma, a bacterial eye disease? A trained worker must examine a person’s inner eyelid and look for the signs. Learn more »
By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
The Carter Center’s neglected tropical disease programs treat and prevent Guinea worm disease, trachoma, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis, with the goal to control, eliminate, and eradicate. Beyond the alleviation of the human suffering caused by these illnesses, this work brings ancillary benefits to communities, health systems, and infrastructure that may be just as important. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer, and Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
The world’s most vulnerable people work hard every day to overcome poverty and disease. They aren’t interested in handouts, but with a hand up they can get the resources they need to surmount obstacles to prosperity and peace. Learn more »
By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer
When new CEO Paige Alexander first saw the cafeteria in the Carter Center’s Atlanta office, paper shamrocks and pots of gold adorned the walls to mark St. Patrick’s Day. Only it wasn’t March. It was June 2020. Learn more »
Mass drug administration, in which entire communities receive drug treatment to halt disease transmission, was interrupted or delayed, but intense work went on behind the scenes to develop sets of COVID-safe procedures.
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In November, the state of Georgia undertook the largest hand tally of election ballots ever performed in the United States. And The Carter Center had a front-row seat.
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The 2020 U.S. election was like none before it. Polarization was at an all-time high, with many on both sides mistrusting each other and the process itself. The pandemic introduced further complications, challenging election officials to find ways to ensure accessibility while keeping voters safe. Because of this, The Carter Center chose to do something it had never done before—get involved in a U.S. election.
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By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
Global mental health has been called the “silent,” “parallel,” or “next” pandemic. Learn more »
In 2005, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III joined forces to chair the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform.
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By Helen Robinson, associate director, public policy
Many Georgians face barriers to accessing mental health care. While this is not a new problem, The Carter Center believes it is urgent that state leaders address the issue during the current public health crisis. Learn more »
The Carter Center is working closely with the Federal Ministry of Health in Ethiopia to eliminate river blindness (onchocerciasis) and lymphatic filariasis throughout that East African nation. Essential to the effort are thousands of volunteers called community-directed distributors, or CDDs, who are chosen by their own communities and do all the work of carefully administering medicine and keeping detailed records. Click through to meet a few of them.
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The Carter Center is honored to join The Saporta Report’s Global Health Thought Leaders rotation. For readers who may not be familiar with our work, allow us to introduce ourselves. Learn more »
Marthaline Nuah is determined to get a college education. There is no university in her village in northeastern Liberia, so she left home and moved in with an aunt who lives in Saniquellie, which is the capital of Nimba County and home to a community college. Her aunt gave her the money to pay for college entrance exams, which she passed, and for the college’s admission fees. But there wasn’t enough left over for courses.
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By Laura Neuman, director, Rule of Law Program
Laura Neuman, senior advisor to The Carter Center, discusses the Inform Women, Transform Lives campaign, what it’s all about, and why it matters. Learn more »
Growing up, Greg Noland voraciously read National Geographic magazines. From his home near Dallas, Texas, Noland became fascinated with other cultures and seeing the world. Learn more »
Liberians now have a new, easy way to file complaints – or compliments – about police officers. With support from The Carter Center, a Liberian company has developed the Find Officer app, part of a larger effort to build trust in the police by increasing accountability. Learn more »
Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of human Guinea worm cases was cut in half to just 27* in 2020, The Carter Center announced Tuesday. The 27 human cases of Guinea worm disease across six African countries mark a 50% decline from the number of cases reported in 2019. Guinea worm infections in animals fell 20% in the same period, the Center reported.
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By Dr. Kashef Ijaz, vice president, health programs
The observance of World Neglected Tropical Disease Day on Jan. 30 (following the public launch of the 2030 NTD Road Map by the WHO on Jan. 28) prompts me to reflect on my good fortune in overseeing the Carter Center’s tireless work to free people from an array of illnesses that cause untold misery and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Learn more »
He could have taken his advanced degrees from Boston and Fordham universities and found a comfortable, high-paying job in the United States. But Dr. Hubert Zirimwabagabo had a different goal for the early years of his career. Learn more »
Sometimes journalists set out to find one story and end up telling a different one. When Myriam Vidal Valero and Rodrigo Perez Ortega received a joint journalism fellowship from The Carter Center in mid-2019, their plan was to document the emotional trauma faced by migrant families separated by U.S. policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. Learn more »
The United States was not the only country in the midst of election season this fall; many countries around the world held or will soon hold elections, and The Carter Center worked on three of them.
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By Ben Spears, senior program associate, Conflict Resolution Program
This is an exciting time in Sudan. After 30 years, a period marked by civil war in Darfur and other areas of the country, Omar al-Bashir was forced from power in a revolution led largely by young women and men. Now Sudan is working out a new identity as it transitions to peace and democracy, and young people can lead the way. Learn more »
The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism program was founded in 1996 by former First Lady Rosalynn Carter to give journalists the resources they need to report accurately and in depth on mental health to help dismantle the stigma that millions of people with mental illnesses face.
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By Paige Alexander, chief executive officer, The Carter Center
I don’t need to tell you what a strange and challenging year 2020 has been. A pandemic has forced us to avoid close human interactions, but The Carter Center has been fortunate and is taking advantage of the opportunities that technology brings to keep moving forward with our mission to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope. Learn more »
By David Carroll, director, Democracy Program
Engaging in the U.S. is more complicated than in other countries because we don’t have a centralized election administration – we have a patchwork of about 10,000 jurisdictions across 50 states. (That, by the way, is one of several areas in which the U.S. falls short of international election standards.) Learn more »
Dedicated service is common among community volunteers and health workers with whom The Carter Center partners, but Dorçelan Offre takes it to another level. Offre, 27, will do whatever it takes to help fight malaria in his native rural Haiti, even if it means going far beyond the end of the road.
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The Carter Center is partnering with Cure Violence Global and Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative on a project to mitigate violence that could erupt in some U.S. communities in the days before and after the November election. Learn more »
Even as conflict in many areas of Syria subsides, dangers still remain – including abandoned or unexploded weapons that could kill or maim unsuspecting civilians as they try to rebuild their lives. Learn more »
Programs to combat neglected tropical diseases usually are aimed at people in villages at the end of the road and occasionally in big cities where all roads lead. But laborers in the fields of large commercial farms in Ethiopia’s Gambella region are often neither here nor there, leaving them vulnerable to contracting, and in some cases spreading, debilitating diseases. Learn more »
Most of the Carter Center’s work against neglected tropical diseases takes place in rural locations that are far from health care facilities and other resources. However, these diseases can be found in some unique urban settings, too, and the Center is just as committed to combating them there to ensure elimination is achieved. Learn more »
When North Dakota Democrats held their caucus in March, residents of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation – which stretches over six counties and nearly a million acres – had just one designated spot to drop off ballots.
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When the Carter Center team arrived in the northern Mali town of Gao one warm, blustery afternoon in February, tensions were running high. Two days earlier, a high-ranking general had been assassinated while tending his animals just outside of town. The killing cast a pall over a major achievement that took place earlier that morning: the deployment of the first 240 soldiers in the newly reconstituted Malian army, made up of combatants from three different elements that fought against each other during Mali’s civil war.
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By Kelly Callahan, M.P.H., director, Trachoma Control Program
When COVID-19 appeared, the first thing public health experts advised us all to do was to wash our hands frequently and thoroughly. This is excellent advice, and it’s what the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program has been teaching people for 20 years. Learn more »
Dr. Nabil Aziz Awad Alla, the Carter Center's longtime country representative in Sudan, has not lived the quiet life of a pencil-pushing administrator. He's a hands-on boss who prefers to look his people in the eye and observe situations directly. Learn more »
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, young artists with ties to The Carter Center are giving their time and talent to create paintings and songs that encourage people in their communities to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
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By Helen Robinson, associate director, public policy, Mental Health Program
Under the leadership of Rosalynn Carter, the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program is joining with partner organizations to bring attention to urgent public policy issues impacting mental health in Georgia and across the United States. The Carter Center’s Helen Robinson, associate director of public policy in the Mental Health Program, answers questions about how the program works to improve access to mental health care for all Georgians. Learn more »
From community engagement to water treatment and filtering to dog tethering, a cluster of villages in remote western Ethiopia is applying creative strategies to protect humans and animals from Guinea worm disease, and their diligence is paying off. Learn more »
Nine years have passed since the conflict in Syria began. In recent months, as opposition strongholds have fallen and frontlines have shifted, the map of territorial control suggests that the conflict is entering its endgame.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
At this time of great challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been deeply moved by the commitment of our Carter Center staff to our mission to help the world’s poorest people. Indeed, our aim to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope has never been more urgent than it is today. Learn more »
Even as governments across the globe rush to protect their citizens from the deadly effects of COVID-19, some are using the coronavirus as an excuse to violate human rights laws and expand their powers. Learn more »
In 2006, the International Task Force for Disease Eradication urged that action be taken to eliminate the mosquito-borne diseases lymphatic filariasis and malaria from Hispaniola. Despite a turbulent history of economic disparity, tensions, and bloodshed, both nations eagerly agreed to binational cooperation, and The Carter Center launched the Hispaniola Initiative to assist them.
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Carter Carter fellows have reported on managing coronavirus anxiety, the challenges of the mental health care system at this time, tips from mental health experts on staying mentally well, how the virus is impacting people experiencing homelessness and more. Learn more »
On March 2, citizens of Guyana went to the polls for what the country was calling “the mother of all elections.” Every election is important, of course, but this one was deemed especially so because five years ago, Exxon discovered massive amounts of oil off the coast of Guyana. The first barrels hit the market in January. Now this small, poor nation is poised to become a very rich one. And the country’s two major political parties – which are divided largely along ethnic lines – desperately want to control the coming wealth.
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To aid individuals and communities during this time, the Carter Center Mental Health Program has compiled global, national, and local resources to promote mental health and wellness. Learn more »
Thirteen years ago, The Carter Center opened the Human Rights House in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is home to a small team of staffers who perform a large amount of work – providing training and assistance to more than 100 local civil society organizations working on issues related to human rights, supporting a protection network that helps keep human rights defenders safe, and overseeing a variety of projects designed to spark youth engagement in democracy and human rights.
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By Peace Habomugisha, Uganda country director
Steven Ocopcan is 77 years old, and he well remembers how river blindness affected his community in Uganda when he was a child. "At the time, people thought they had annoyed God and, in return, he cursed us," Ocopcan told me. "Many people sacrificed cows, goats, and hens to God, but this didn’t work. People accused one another of bewitching others. It was bad." Learn more »
A provisional total of 53 cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in 2019, The Carter Center announced Wednesday. Intensified surveillance and reporting incentives in endemic areas in recent years have produced expected fluctuations in the small number of Guinea worm cases. When The Carter Center assumed leadership of the program in 1986, about 3.5 million human cases occurred annually in 21 countries in Africa and Asia.
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By Daniel Deng Madit Kuchlong, health agent, South Sudan’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program
Daniel Deng Madit Kuchlong, aka Daniel Deng, is a health agent with South Sudan’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program. Here is his firsthand account, lightly edited, of how Guinea worm has affected his life. Learn more »
By Laura Neuman, director, Rule of Law Program
Selima Begum, 28, is the mother of a 7-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. They live in Tuker Bazar Union, Sylhet Division, Bangladesh. Since her divorce, Begum has struggled to provide necessary medical care for her son, at times having to forgo routine medical treatments because of a lack of money. Though she works as a housecleaner when she can, it often does not pay enough to meet all her family’s needs. Learn more »
Weiss, who was named director of the Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program a little more than a year ago, brings to the position both experience in the field and at the Center’s headquarters in Atlanta. With eight years living in Ghana and Ethiopia in many Guinea worm program roles, Weiss is uniquely positioned to understand the challenges of eradicating Guinea worm disease, an international campaign spearheaded by The Carter Center that has reduced cases more than 99.9% since 1986.
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By Abeer Al Fouti, Executive Director of Global Initiatives, Alwaleed Philanthropies
You almost certainly have never heard of Guinea worm disease. It doesn’t generate news headlines, is not often top of mind for global health experts, and does not attract large-scale funding for eradication efforts. Yet we are close to eliminating this devastating disease, with just a final effort required to make it gone for good. Learn more »
By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
In 1982, President and Mrs. Carter created a new kind of post-presidential institution, not a think tank, but an organization acting to alleviate suffering and advance human rights for the world’s poorest people. Ever since, innovation has been part of the Center’s DNA. Learn more »
Human rights activists and scholars from 28 countries gathered at The Carter Center recently for the 12th Human Rights Defenders Forum. This year’s theme was “Building Solidarity toward Equality for All,” and topics included global protection for activists, challenges for women defenders and peacemakers, and the importance of mutually supporting civil, economic, political, and social rights. Defenders talked about their struggles and frustrations but also offered words of wisdom and hope. Learn more »
At a mobile surgery camp in Lotien, a village in South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria region, a man requested surgery to help his son Lochin, age 11, who was suffering from trachomatous trichiasis (TT). After walking 245 kilometers (more than 150 miles) from their home, Lochin and his father arrived just before the temporary camp was nearing its end.
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When Dr. Moussa Saye was a boy, the rainy season brought great suffering to his village in the Bankass district of central Mali. “There were thousands of cases of Guinea worm in our village and other villages nearby,” he said. “There were whole families who couldn’t go to work. We called it ‘The Disease of No Food,’ because people couldn’t work in the fields and put away food.” Learn more »
In many parts of the world, repression is on the rise and freedom on the decline. But brave human rights defenders continue to fight for equality and fair treatment for all. Hear what participants in our Human Rights Defenders Forum have to say about the state of human rights across the globe. Learn what they’re doing to protect and promote these rights – and how you, too, can be a defender. Learn more »
Aisha Ahmed and Safi Inorano go about their daily tasks with holes in their hearts. While they work as cleaners on the U.N. base in Kidal, Mali, their daughters live with relatives hundreds of miles away in cities that – unlike their own – have functioning schools.
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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter discuss how the Center wages peace and fights disease to build hope for millions around the world. They also take questions from the audience. Learn more »
Leaders and everyday citizens in central Mali seek solutions to tribal and political conflict that has disrupted their lives.
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One bright morning in mid-June, a U.N. convoy rolls through the small, dusty town of Kidal in Mali’s northern desert. The temperature is already well on its way to a high of 114, and few people are on the street to witness a Carter Center staffer in a blue flak jacket and helmet clamber out of the back of an armored personnel carrier (what a civilian might call a tank) into the brutal heat.
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Selima Begum, 28, is the mother of a 7-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. They live in Tuker Bazar Union, Sylhet Division, Bangladesh. Since her divorce, Selima has struggled to provide necessary medical care for her son, at times having to forgo routine medical treatments because of a lack of money. Though she works as a housecleaner when she can, it often does not pay enough to meet all her family’s needs.
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By Angelia Sanders, associate director, Trachoma Control Program and vice chair, International Coalition for Trachoma Control
Natural disasters, conflict, and other factors can force entire populations to leave their homes and seek safer living conditions elsewhere. Such people are known as internally displaced persons (or IDPs) if they move within their home country or refugees if they cross international boundaries. Refugees are protected by international laws; IDPs are not. Learn more »
By John Goodman, associate director in the Conflict Resolution Program
The Carter Center's John Goodman, associate director in the Conflict Resolution Program, spoke recently to Al Jazeera's Nicolas Haque in Bamako, Mali, about ongoing violence and instability in Mali and how the people there have seen few, if any, dividends from the peace agreement signed four years ago. Learn more »
A low, boxy building made of rough but neatly mortared concrete blocks stands in the city of Mirriah, located in central Niger. Out back are a three-panel solar power array, a satellite dish, and a 100-foot-tall mast antenna. Inside are two desks with whirring computers, a small room with an electronic audio control panel, and a glassed-in room equipped with a round table, chairs, and two microphones on bases fashioned out of machinery gears.
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Abdalla Yousif recalls how heavy the rain was in Blue Nile state, Sudan. After four hours of torrential rain, the trachoma survey team he was traveling with decided it was best to spend the night in the car. The next morning, they did what they had done so often, they tested the road with their feet, pushed their car out of the mud, and continued to the next village. Learn more »
By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
The Carter Center operates dozens of initiatives addressing a range of challenging peace and health issues. Some of them seek to end human rights abuses and promote sustainable peace, while others help improve the health of at-risk people in remote places. Learn more »
Courtenay Harris Bond is a 2017–18 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship recipient. She is a freelance journalist and currently a Scattergood Foundation Journalist-in-Residence. Learn more »
Just a few years ago, ISIS controlled giant swaths of Syria – its combined lands totaled more than 34,000 square miles, just a little less than you’ll find in the state of Indiana. Today, it has lost all that territory. But that doesn’t mean it is no longer a threat to the people of Syria. Individuals and groups with ties to ISIS continue to carry out attacks, even as the nature and number of those attacks change. Learn more »
In the spring of 2019, staff members in the Carter Center’s Latin America and Caribbean Program traveled to Mérida, capital of Mexico’s Yucatán state, to present a report about Mexico’s human rights system.
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Through its Public Health Training Initiatives in Nigeria and Sudan, The Carter Center helps educational institutions improve the way they prepare health workers to serve the public. In Nigeria, the initiative supports one institution in each of six states. Learn more »
Just 28 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in 2018, down slightly from 30 cases reported in 2017. When The Carter Center began leading the international campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases annually in 21 countries.
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In a small, dimly lit office in Birni N'Gaouré, a town in the Dosso region of southern Niger, are a desk, a laptop computer, a lamp, and a ceiling fan. Occupying one wall are square cubbyholes brimming with colorful binders. It looks like something one might see in a kindergarten classroom.
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By Hunter Keys, consultant, Hispaniola Initiative
In the poor neighborhoods where malaria festers in the Dominican Republic, people describe someone who hustles through everyday life as a chiripero, a “lucky sort.” Learn more »
Laura Olson jumped at the chance to work at The Carter Center because of the opportunity to work directly with communities in other countries. “What spoke to me was that The Carter Center really listens to people. We are there to facilitate the changes they want to see and not to tell them what they should do. I also like that we help build local capacity so that communities can independently accomplish their goals.” Learn more »
The Carter Center, with the support of UK Aid, helped prepare a range of voter education materials for the March 31 municipal elections in Yangon, Myanmar. A coalition of 10 civil society organizations, coordinated by our partner New Myanmar Foundation, is using the materials in its street campaign. These are Yangon’s first elections with universal suffrage, so many women and youth will be voting for the first time. Learn more »
Rakia Ado, 20, was at home one day in Katirge, a remote village in southern Niger, when a team of government health workers and Carter Center staffers showed up. The workers, trained and equipped by The Carter Center, explained their mission and asked if they could examine Ado’s eyes and eyelids.
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WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expresses support for the global campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease and partner efforts to eliminate neglected tropical diseases. Dr. Tedros personally thanks former U.S. President Jimmy Carter for his leadership in the fight against Guinea worm and The Carter Center for being a cornerstone of the campaign. Learn more »
If you want to get things done in Niger, it helps to know Mohamed Salissou Kané. The Carter Center’s country representative in Niger seems to have connections everywhere.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
The Center’s work is never easy, even in the best of times, when the world seems eager to embrace the efforts you help make possible in seeking peace, health, and hope for people in need. Learn more »
By Eve Byrd, director, Carter Center Mental Health Program
Under the leadership and guidance of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, The Carter Center Mental Health Program is joining with other organizations to bring attention and resources to mental health care, both in the United States and abroad. Program Director Eve Byrd explains. Learn more »
Their ancestors were the first to live on the land that came to be known as America, and yet many still have trouble exercising the most basic of American rights – the right to vote. Native Americans face a variety of barriers on their way to the polls, some of which seem almost unbelievable in 2019.
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Life is hard enough in Haiti, with its profound poverty, natural disasters, and troubled political history. Add to the mix an insidious tropical disease that causes permanent disfigurement, and the result is misery that defies description.
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For the indigenous Yanomami people of the Amazon Rainforest, trekking through jungle pathways is a way of life. Such paths serve as the only way in or out of remote Yanomami communities, where the parasitic disease river blindness is transmitted by the bites of tiny black flies. Learn more »
The Carter Center's China Program looks back at President Carter’s 1979 decision to normalize relations with China, and is publishing academic papers to commemorate the anniversary. Learn more »
In July, The Carter Center brought together nearly 70 activists, peacemakers, and religious and community leaders from 36 countries for the annual Human Rights Defenders Forum.
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The Carter Center is commemorating the 40th anniversary of normalizing diplomatic relations with China with a symposium on Jan. 17-19 that will feature dozens of experts on U.S.-China relations. You can read more about this diplomatic feat on this page, which features a Q&A with President Carter, a timeline of key moments in the China Program, and a President Carter-penned op-ed on the future of U.S.-Sino relations that recently ran in The Washington Post.
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Key moments in the Center’s decades-long relationship with the People’s Republic of China.
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From the personal to the political, President Carter reflects on our nation’s – and his own – relationship with China. Excerpt from the Shanghai Institute of American Studies' "Forty People, Forty Years" series commemorating the 40th anniversary of diplomatic normalization between the United States and China.
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A Carter Center initiative is helping Nigeria train health workers to meet the needs of mothers and their babies, particularly in rural areas. Learn more »
By Andrés Bermúdez Liévano, 2017-18 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow
My country suffered through 50 years of violent internal conflict before The Carter Center and others helped the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia conclude a historic peace agreement in 2016. While the parties to the talks continue to create and shape a new political reality, people who lived through the conflict are seeking ways to deal with what they have seen and endured. Learn more »
If you missed the Carter Center's original webcast of "Harmonizing Religion and Human Rights," an archive version of the panel discussion can be watched below. Learn more »
By Iman Ben Chaibah, recipient of a 2017–2018 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship
In September, I completed my Rosalynn Carter Fellowship in Mental Health Journalism. The fellowships were started by former First Lady Rosalynn Carter about 20 years ago to provide journalists with resources and opportunities to accurately and holistically report on mental health in their countries and their regions. Learn more »
Dec. 9 marks the 20th anniversary of the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, a document that The Carter Center helped craft that acknowledges the vital role played by frontline activists in the struggle for human freedom. We celebrate this anniversary by honoring the bravery of those who put their lives on the line so that all of us can live in freedom. Learn more »
As a team of health workers arrives in Chan Bon, a tiny mountainside community south of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the aromas of lush plants and cooking food hang in the air while clouds play hide-and-seek with the Caribbean sun. A small group of children noisily labors to free a makeshift plastic kite whose string is tangled in a tree.
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Building a peaceful world involves more than ending war. A peaceful world is one in which justice thrives, everyone’s rights are respected, and people have access to essentials. The Carter Center has dozens of programs and projects dedicated to making the dream of peace a reality. This slide show explores a handful of them.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
At The Carter Center, we believe people can improve their own lives when they have the right skills, knowledge, and access to resources. I’d like to introduce you to a few people who are making a real difference in their communities. Learn more »
Reverend Esther Ibanga is the senior pastor of Jos Christian Missions International and the president and founder of Women Without Walls Initiative (WOWWI), an organization established to address the persistent ethno–religious conflicts in Plateau state. Under her leadership, WOWWI has provided a platform for women across different ethnic and religious groups to activate their voices in the call for peace. Learn more »
Helping is in Dr. Manuel Gonzales’ nature. It’s not just what he does; it’s who he is. “My vocation is to help people and help my country,” said Gonzales, who became the national manager of the Dominican Republic’s successful Lymphatic Filariasis Elimination Program in April 2001.
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It’s good to distribute medicine that helps people avoid a painful, potentially blinding eye disease. It’s even better when that medicine also helps keep babies and children alive.
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In case you missed “A Conversation with the Carters” on Sept. 11 at The Carter Center, an archived version of the webcast can be viewed below. Learn more »
Information has the power to transform lives. But only if you can access it. In 2014, the Carter Center’s Global Access to Information program conducted a study that found that women in Guatemala have a harder time than men accessing information to which they’re entitled. This includes information about things that could make enormous differences in their lives – information about government benefit programs, about laws that protect them, about business and educational opportunities.
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Meet Penda Mbaye, program manager for Tostan in Senegal, where the international nonprofit works to empower women and girls and create positive social change. As an attendee of the Carter Center’s Human Rights Defenders Forum, Mbaye shared her expertise in human rights education and community outreach. Learn more »
Theodosia Borbor may not be a lawyer, but she knows Liberian law. And she’s passionate about making sure others do, too. Borbor is a community justice advisor with the Carter Center-supported Catholic Justice and Peace Commission. She provides free mediation services and organizes community awareness sessions for the people of Margibi County, which sits about an hour from Liberia’s capital, Monrovia.
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Mongia Nefzi Souahi, a professor at Zitouna University in Tunisia, knows what draws young people to violent extremism. She spent much of the past year trying to insulate 100 at-risk young people in the town of Kasserine – which CNN has called “the Tunisian town where ISIS makes militants” – from the lure of jihadis.
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In the middle of bustling W.V.S. Tubman High School in Monrovia, Liberia, you’ll find a tranquil two-room oasis: the mental health clinic. Behind its metal door, which blocks out much of the cacophony from the open-air halls, students talk to mental health clinician Leah D.T. Sorboh about problems major and minor. Some of the teens’ complaints echo those of their counterparts around the world – they talk about breakups and mean teachers and difficult tests.
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In July 2018, The Carter Center brought together nearly 70 activists, peacemakers, and religious and community leaders from around the world for the Carter Center’s annual Human Rights Defenders Forum to discuss “Restoring Faith in Freedom.”
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The 40-year-old mother of four is the first female driver for the Carter Center’s Access to Justice Project in Liberia – and one of the country’s few female professional drivers, period.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
It’s no secret that this world is full of problems—some big and terrifying, some small and trivial. It may seem overwhelming at times, but it doesn’t have to be paralyzing. Learn more »
Kate Orji grabs a tall measuring stick and large black plastic bag before heading across her front yard and through the gate of her family’s compound. It’s midday in this southern Nigeria community, and the air is hot and sticky. Orji knocks on her neighbor’s door and explains why she’s here, unpacking her bag to reveal two logbooks, a flipbook, two drug bottles, a spoon, and a pen.
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Eve Byrd remembers a conversation she had with a nursing student in Liberia several years ago. A faculty member for a Carter Center program to credential nurses for mental health disorders, Byrd and her student nurse had just finished seeing a patient and were discussing the case.
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In 2014, The Carter Center launched what is now called the Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Extremism Project. Staff first conducted an in-depth analysis of Daesh’s recruitment propaganda and then began training religious and community leaders to develop messaging to counteract extremist propaganda in all forms, whether it comes from Daesh or Islamophobic hate groups.
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Sometimes, something as simple as a radio message can change lives. Olivia Stewart, a resident of New Georgia Estate, a mostly low-income community on the outskirts of Liberia’s capital city of Monrovia, was washing up one afternoon in 2015 when she heard a public notice for government grants for projects empowering women and youth.
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To extend the reach of their stories and maintain relevance in a world of spinning news cycles, journalists today often have mandates to create social media accounts and share a weekly quota of posts on them. But for Jaclyn Cosgrove, a 2015-16 recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, social media means more than just posting her story. Learn more »
Ethiopia is serious about eliminating river blindness and has the laboratory to prove it. The laboratory, in Addis Ababa, opened in October 2015 as the Ethiopia Ministry of Health shifted from merely seeking to control the disease, technically called onchocerciasis, to trying to eliminate it entirely.
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A landmark study in which The Carter Center is participating could radically change the public health model in the developing world, experts say. Learn more »
Malaria, a potentially deadly disease, with its fevers, aches, and extreme fatigue, definitely is not cool. But a music video featuring a great dance beat and a team of top Haitian performers? Now that’s cool! Learn more »
Herded outdoors by their teachers, bright-eyed children chatter, their blue-and-white school uniforms gleaming in a sharp but wiggly queue. Their excitement ebbs just a bit when they reach the front of the line and get a finger pricked by an adult wearing surgical gloves.
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Last year, a Liberian woman named Beatrix decided she wanted to run for a seat in Liberia’s House of Representatives. But when she told her husband of her plan, he told her that she couldn’t, because she was a woman. Learn more »
Even in the shade it was 105 degrees Fahrenheit. It can be challenging to focus in that kind of heat, but Dr. Saisabil Omer and Dr. Mayasa Mustafa were committed to providing sight-saving surgery to the men and women who came to the trachoma clinic in Al Fashaga, Gedarif state, Sudan.
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Meet some elders of Kisanchi village in central Nigeria. They are blind or have low vision due to river blindness, a parasitic infection that can cause intense itching, skin discoloration, rashes, and eye disease that often leads to permanent blindness.
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In Feburary 2018, President Carter got candid about China in a guest lecture at Emory University. President Carter discussed factors that led to his decision to normalize U.S. relations with China in 1979. He also talks about a dinner conversation with President Deng Xiaoping that likely led to a surge of Christianity in China, now one of the world's leading producers of Bibles. Learn more »
In 2018, The Carter Center is marking 20 years of impact against trachoma, the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness.
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By Kelly Callahan, director, Trachoma Control Program
Hard work for a good cause can be its own reward. It’s even better when you have results to show for it. In 2018 The Carter Center is marking 20 years of impact against trachoma, the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness. Learn more »
By Laura Neuman, director, Carter Center Global Access to Information Program
Access to information is a transformative human right. Enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, access to information is foundational not just for the exercise of other rights, but also for economic empowerment and meaningful participation in public life. And yet, a large portion of the world’s population is unable to enjoy this right. Learn more »
For these boys, freedom from a disfiguring disease means freedom to pursue their dreams on the diamond. Angel Ciriaco and Rigoberto Bryan are best friends who live in San Pedro de Macoris, a province in the southeastern Dominican Republic. The two 16-year-olds like to talk about school, about girls, and most of all about baseball. Learn more »
In Kenya in the early years of this century, young men in Nairobi’s Mathare slum were dying one by one at the hands of police and security officers. Sometimes it happened out of sight in custody, sometimes in broad daylight in the street. Other youths simply disappeared, their fates never determined.
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Play our puzzle! Find peace, health, and hope words in the Carter Center’s Word Search below. Learn more »
The year 2017 was a historic one for Liberia. “For the first time in most of their lives, Liberians saw power transfer from one democratically elected president to another,” said Jordan Ryan, vice president of the Carter Center’s peace programs. “This is something that hasn’t happened in Liberia since the 1940s. Other presidents were forced from power, died in office, or murdered in coups.
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At the heart of the River Blindness Elimination Program in Nigeria are thousands of community volunteers who receive training and equipment to serve as community-directed distributors. They deliver accurate health information to their neighbors, administer the medications that combat the disease, and keep thorough records for Ministry of Health and Carter Center researchers to track progress. Get to know some of these volunteers here.
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Healing from trauma sometimes goes beyond individual therapy, journalist Emily Underwood reports. Underwood is helping readers understand that when an entire community experiences trauma, a kind of communal healing needs to take place as well. Learn more »
On Aug. 8, the Kenyan people stood for hours in long lines to cast their votes in presidential, parliamentary, and local races.
Despite their patience and determination, the underlying mood was tense.
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By Adamu Sallau, director, Carter Center health programs in Nigeria’s Imo and Abia states
Scientific or logistical challenges aren’t the only issues Carter Center personnel have to deal with while tracking down, treating, and preventing neglected tropical diseases in remote places. Cultural issues often play a role as well, and we have to handle them respectfully and sensitively. Learn more »
Ten-year-old Gideon Abraham and his brother Odenaka, 12, and sister Blessing, 7, had come to live with their grandmother in Amagunze, Enugu state, Nigeria, in the middle of the school year. They are bright children, and getting in sync with their new school’s lessons was the easy part. Gideon wants to fly airplanes when he grows up — and perhaps become president of Nigeria.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
We all know Benjamin Franklin’s proverb “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It makes sense to try to keep a bad thing from happening rather than to try to fix the mess that results if you let the bad thing happen. This simple but profound principle is at work in everything we do at The Carter Center. Learn more »
Every day in the weeks leading up to Liberia’s Oct. 10 election, scores of women wearing white t-shirts and blue-and-white skirts gathered in an open-air tent set up in a field in the capital city of Monrovia.
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The Carter Center and Emory University celebrate an amazing 35-year partnership in 2017, a rare and productive union between a nongovernmental organization and a leading institution of higher education. Together, our reach has improved the lives of millions of the world's poorest people through disease prevention, conflict resolution, and the strengthening of human rights and democracy. Learn more »
By Jason Kibiswa Bulambo, technical trainer
The Human Rights House operates three neighborhood Youth Houses, or Maisons des Jeunes — two in Kinshasa and one in Goma — where we work to encourage the positive and constructive participation of youth in public affairs. We provide a free space for debate, which encourages the free exchange of ideas on participatory democracy. Learn more »
Walking home from his office in Kakata, Liberia, Victor Tuazama stumbled upon a confrontation between a police officer and a citizen. When it became clear that the citizen was about to be arrested because he owed a man the equivalent of about US$30, Tuazama, who works as a community justice advisor for the Carter Center-supported Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, intervened.
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Mirlande Joseph walks the blistering hot, dusty back alleys of Port-au-Prince, greeting people as if she were a politician running for re-election.
“How are you? How is your family? Anyone sick? Did everyone take the medicine when we came by before?”
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By Jordan Ryan, vice president, peace programs
Over the course of six recent posts, I shared some of the approaches to waging peace that that The Carter Center and its founder, former President Jimmy Carter, have developed or learned over many years. Learn more »
Tigist Astale, an epidemiologist for The Carter Center in Ethiopia, has faced down angry dogs, runaway cattle, and crocodile-filled rivers. She supervises extensive field work in far-flung locations all over the Amhara region of Ethiopia, a region with a considerable burden of trachoma. Because of her commitment to gathering quality data, the trachoma control program continues to implement effective interventions to help reduce blindness in Amhara.
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By Houda Abadi, associate director, Conflict Resolution Program
Hate crimes in the U.S. against Muslims or people who look as if they may be Muslim are at an all-time high. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, from 2015 to 2016 the number of anti-Muslim hate groups in the U.S. grew 197 percent and anti-Muslim hate crimes surged 67 percent. From January to July 2017, there were 63 attacks on mosques. Learn more »
By Jordan Ryan, vice president, peace programs
The Carter Center’s motto is “Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope.” In these times, the task for peacemakers is urgent. Learn more »
Before the Taliban, before the war, before women were banned from positions of power, Najla Ayubi was a judge in Afghanistan. Extremists forced her out of her courtroom and eventually out of her country.
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For nearly three years, 83-year-old Blanca Nieves Valdez didn’t exist. She was living in a cozy house in the small town of San José la Arada, Guatemala, doing all the things that real people do —eating, sleeping, chatting, chores — but as far as the government of Guatemala was concerned, she was a non-person. The official record book containing her information was destroyed, so when the government changed its ID system, it didn’t issue her a new ID card.
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Cordelia Anude wears a stylish metal cross pendant, a symbol of the faith that sustains her. However, it wasn’t so long ago that she felt distanced from God and from her fellow believers. An advancing case of river blindness had impaired her vision, making it impossible to walk to church on Sunday or study her Bible at home.
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By Dr. Dean G. Sienko, vice president, health programs
At The Carter Center, we never want anyone to be dependent on us. All of our programs are designed to solve problems, and to help our partners build their own capability, resiliency, and self-reliance. We believe in meaningful partnerships, not only with donors and governments but also—and most importantly—with the communities where we work. Learn more »
President and Mrs. Carter thank the many people who showed their support to advance the Carter Center's campaign in the MacArthur Foundation's 100&Change competition for a $100 million grant to fund a single proposal that promises to solve a critical problem of our time. The Center proposes a bold plan to eliminate river blindness disease in Nigeria, creating a model for the rest of Africa and the world.
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By Jordan Ryan, vice president, peace programs
The task for peacemakers today is urgent. Learn more »
Okechukwu Obodo is a widower who is well into his 70s. He lives in a one-room dwelling that is so orderly he can immediately tell when anything is out of place, and he’s good at building a fire for cooking — not bad for someone who’s been blind for 15 years.
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Juliana Onwumere is a neglected tropical disease coordinator in Imo state ministry of health. As The Carter Center and partners fight to eliminate river blindness disease in Nigeria, one of Onwumere’s tasks is to collect black flies to be tested for evidence of the disease. Learn more »
Abeer Pamuk had just started her sophomore year at the University of Aleppo when the Syrian civil war erupted. She was studying English literature and dreaming of a career as a humanitarian worker in South Sudan. But when the Al-Nusra Front terrorist group occupied the street behind her house, her plans were derailed.
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Millions will be spared future suffering thanks to collaborative efforts of The Carter Center and Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Health to address widespread neglected diseases such river blindness. Hear from Nigeria's Minister of Health, Dr. Isaac Adewole, on the importance of this partnership. Learn more »
Join us in celebrating former First Lady Rosalynn Carter's 90th birthday this August 18 as we thank her for all she has done to make the world a better place. Learn more »
By Dr. Frank Richards, director, River Blindness Elimination Program
There’s a famous line in the movie “Jaws” – after the stunned sheriff sees the monster shark for the first time, he says to the shark hunter: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Learn more »
By Rebecca Palpant Shimkets, associate director, Carter Center Mental Health Program
Seeing South Africa’s mental health journalism program blossom fills me, along with Rosalynn Carter and everyone here at the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program, with the kind of pride one feels when a family member receives a university degree. We are thrilled to have helped the program take its first steps. Learn more »
How do dirty clothes hanging in a tree help eliminate river blindness in Nigeria? Dr. Frank Richards, who directs the Carter Center’s programs on river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis, explains. Learn more »
When Kenyans go to the polls Aug. 8 to choose their next president, election observers expect tensions to be running high. The race is a virtual repeat of the 2013 contest, again pitting challenger Raila Odinga against Uhuru Kenyatta, who won the last round by the narrowest of margins.
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By Jordan Ryan, vice president, peace programs
In these times, the task for peacemakers is urgent. Learn more »
In many cultures, a person’s name carries significant meaning and may even be thought to describe one’s destiny. In the Southeastern region of his native Nigeria, Dr. Emmanuel Miri’s name means "water" and "life," and few names could be more appropriate for the man who directs the Carter Center's health programs in that country.
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It’s a sweltering morning in Khartoum, Sudan. The temperature inside the sage-green corridors of the National Health Laboratory building is only slightly below that in the dusty parking lot outside, and the elevator is out of service.
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By Tye Tavaras
Until 1924’s Indian Citizenship Act, American Indians did not have the legal right to vote. Learn more »
Dr. Frank Richards, who directs the Carter Center’s programs on river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis, explains why health education matters in the fight to eliminate diseases. Learn more »
By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer, The Carter Center.
We think big at The Carter Center. Big ideas, big plans, big goals. Learn more »
By Dr. Emmanuel Miri, Carter Center country representative, Nigeria
Gabriel Ani is a farmer and schoolteacher in the Ndiulo Enugu-Nato village in Enugu State, Nigeria, who loves his community and is loved back. Gabriel is a community volunteer drug distributor — the hands, feet, and heart of our River Blindness Elimination Program. For nine years, he has served more than 1,000 people in 129 households, carefully measuring each person to determine the proper dosage of medicine and recording it in a ledger. Learn more »
Join us Tuesday, June 13, at 11 a.m. EDT for a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" chat, co-hosted by The Carter Center and the MacArthur Foundation. Dr. Frank Richards, who directs the Carter Center’s programs on river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis, will answer your questions.
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Watch how Nigerian Joel Kasuwa, a passionate and committed volunteer, is working with The Carter Center to help us eliminate river blindness in Nigeria. Learn more »
By Jordan Ryan, vice president, peace programs
The Carter Center’s motto is “Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope.” In today’s world, the task for peacemakers is urgent. Learn more »
Human rights defenders from around the world met at The Carter Center in May 2017 to teach, learn from, network with, and encourage one another under the theme Freedom from Fear: Securing Rights in Challenging Times. At the closing session of the forum, they issued a unified statement, excerpts of which accompany the following images.
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From Guatemala to Nigeria and beyond, Dr. Frank O. Richards Jr. has dedicated most of his adult life to freeing people from the miseries of river blindness. He has been director of the Carter Center’s River Blindness Elimination program since its inception in 1996.
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Jennie Lincoln’s career in the Carter Center’s Latin America and Caribbean Program has allowed her to be part of some incredible moments.
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The Carter Center’s Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Extremism initiative has issued a paper that analyzes how the Islamic extremist group targets children in its recruitment materials and uses them in its operations. Learn more »
By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer, The Carter Center
Leveraging the experience of our pioneering work to eradicate Guinea worm disease, The Carter Center made the audacious decision to pursue elimination of river blindness (onchocerciasis) everywhere we work on it in Africa and Latin America. Learn more »
In case you missed “Waging Peace in Turbulent Times” on April 13, 2017, an archived webcast of this event can be viewed below. Learn more »
Watch the video below to hear former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s remarks at the 2017 World Health Organization’s Global Partners Meeting in Geneva on the worldwide effort to reduce the burden of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Learn more »
Why is it critical to eliminate river blindness in Nigeria? Our CEO Amb. Mary Ann Peters and Nigerian Minister of Health Dr. Isaac Adewole explain the need and great potential in this brief video. Learn more »
By Jordan Ryan, vice president, peace programs
In today’s world, the task for peacemakers is urgent. Learn more »
In Liberia’s Nimba County, many women are raising their children on their own. Fathers often contribute little or nothing to their care, even if the mothers take them to court. Judges may side with the women and order the men to pay child support, but too often the men make a payment or two and then slip off to some other part of the country, never to be heard from again.
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With two states in Nigeria on the brink of wiping out river blindness, the Center is stepping up efforts.
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Gabriel Ani, a 40ish farmer and schoolteacher, is the Carter Center-trained community drug distributor in Ndiulo Village, Aninri Local Government Area, Enugu State, southeastern Nigeria.
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By Jordan Ryan, vice president, peace programs
In this time of extreme polarization, when violence seems to be the “new normal,” we face a threat of escalating conflict at home and abroad. The task for peacemakers is urgent. Learn more »
By Kelly Callahan, M.P.H., director, Carter Center Trachoma Control Program
One of the horrible hallmarks of advanced trachoma is a painful inward turning of the eyelids. This condition, called trachomatous trichiasis, causes the sufferer’s eyelashes to scrape the surface of the eye, often leading to blindness. Among other interventions, The Carter Center trains and equips local health-care workers to perform a simple outpatient surgical procedure that reverses the condition. Learn more »
Going to university changed Huda Shafig. Until then, she said, she had “kind of lived in a bubble,” mostly unaware of the impact of the conflict raging in parts of Sudan outside of her hometown of Khartoum.
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Liberia’s 2014-2015 Ebola crisis, following a 14-year civil war, left devastated families in its wake. Thousands of children and adolescents were orphaned, confined in isolation units, or stranded at home watching loved ones suffer and die, triggering a special set of post-traumatic mental health challenges. Learn more »
Cecilia Conrad, managing director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, discusses the Carter Center’s 100&Change proposal, which aims to eliminate river blindness in Nigeria. Learn more »
By Jimmy Carter, co-founder, The Carter Center
After leaving the White House, Rosalynn and I searched our hearts for ways to use our unique position to help those less fortunate around the world. We knew that two issues were of paramount importance: advancing peace and preventing human suffering. Learn more »
In the mid-1990s, Monica McWilliams spent two years at negotiating tables sitting next to the leader of an armed group that had tortured and killed her best friend during the Northern Ireland conflict known as The Troubles.
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By Dean G. Sienko, M.D., M.S., vice president, Carter Center Health Programs
I’m the new guy around here. Although I’ve visited and worked in many places during my medical career – including multiple overseas deployments with the U.S. Army – my first trip abroad with The Carter Center was a new highlight. Learn more »
In case you missed the Center’s Facebook Live coverage of U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Dr. Donald Hopkins’ press conference on Jan. 11, 2017, an archived webcast of this event can be viewed below. Learn more »
In this exclusive interview, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter ventures behind-the-scenes of “Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease,” an exhibition created in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History, open at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum through Oct. 9. Learn more »
Newspaper reporter Jaclyn Cosgrove wanted to dig deeper into serious mental health issues, but the tools at hand weren’t adequate for the job. That changed dramatically when she received a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.
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Using data-driven measurements and monitoring — and working closely with federal ministries of health and affected communities — the Carter Center-led Guinea worm eradication campaign has driven the global incidence of Guinea worm disease down more than 99.99 percent since 1986.
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By Jake Turner, intern, Latin America and Caribbean Program
As an intern in the Latin America and Caribbean Program, I had the opportunity to be part of Colombia’s domestic election observation to witness Colombians voting abroad on Oct. 2 in a plebiscite to approve the peace accord between the government and the Marxist rebel group FARC. Our assignment was to observe the vote at the consulate in Atlanta. Learn more »
Tessougue Yietere lives in a village called Logo in Mali's Mopti region, where the Sahara desert gives way to the Central African rainforest. For many years Yietere had suffered from trachoma, a tropical eye infection that can lead to blindness.
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One afternoon last summer, a 14-year-old boy from China turned up at The Carter Center bearing a check for $451. Leo Hu and his schoolmates in Xi-an raised the money by charging admission to a play they wrote about Syrian refugees, and he flew all the way to across the Pacific to deliver it in person. Learn more »
In 2016, The Carter Center convened dozens of human rights defenders from around the world to explore how to avoid violence while advocating for change. We asked several defenders to explain what human rights means to them.
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Thirteen-year-old Jude Musa looked serious, even stoic, as a volunteer from his village gauged his height with a measuring stick. Community drug distributor Yusuf Maikeffi determined the proper dose of praziquantel and handed the tablets to the boy, who popped them into his mouth and chased them with fresh water from a plastic pouch. Learn more »
By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
As I write this, The Carter Center is closing in on the distribution of its 500 millionth dose of drugs to combat neglected tropical diseases. That’s half a billion doses of medication given to tens of millions of people suffering or at risk for river blindness, trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, and schistosomiasis. Big institutional milestones are the result of small individual efforts. Learn more »
By Hunter Keys, consultant, Hispaniola Initiative
Parasites keep strange schedules. Those that cause lymphatic filariasis, for example, are mostly active at night. To detect parasites in the blood, health workers will take a nocturnal sample, sometimes as late as 2 a.m. Learn more »
By Dr. Frank Richards, director, River Blindness Elimination Program
My career has come full circle. I was working in Guatemala for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1988 on the parasitic worm disease called river blindness. Then, Guatemala was Latin America’s most endemic country for the disease, which is spread by bites of black flies breeding in streams. Now, the World Health Organization has verified that Guatemala has eliminated the disease. This is a monumental achievement, reflecting 28 years of effort. Learn more »
In case you missed “Observing U.S. Elections” on Oct. 13, 2016, an archived webcast of this event can be viewed below. Learn more »
Members of the League of Women Voters of Ohio learn about election observation from Carter Center staff.
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The Carter Center in 2016 surpassed 500 million doses of medication distributed to fight neglected tropical diseases.
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"Trachoma: Defeating a Blinding Curse," a documentary feature film that follows Carter Center staff, global health partners, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter engaged in a comprehensive strategy to eliminate blinding trachoma in Ethiopia, aired on American Public Television stations nationwide this fall.
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In advance of the U.S. presidential election of 2016, which will take place on Nov. 8, Davis-Roberts and Carroll answered questions on election observation in the United States. Learn more »
On Sept. 15, members of the Center’s Americas Program traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, for the launch of Trayectoria Institucional de los DDH en Colombia: Retos para Tiempos de Paz, a new publication produced by The Carter Center. Learn more »
In case you missed “A Conversation with the Carters” on Sept. 13, 2016, an archived webcast of this event can be viewed below. Learn more »
For more than 50 years, Colombia has been plagued by civil war. The fighting forced more than 5 million people from their homes and claimed the lives of more than 200,000, according to most reports. But finally, after four years of negotiations, peace is at hand. The Carter Center has been working behind the scenes in Colombia to help prepare for life after war. Learn more »
As the Democratic Republic of Congo edges toward its next national election — slated for November, though the timing is in question — one thing is clear: The nation’s young people will play an important role.
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Every year, thousands of people leave their home countries and travel to Syria or Iraq to join Daesh, also known as ISIS. Why? What compels these people — most of them young, most of them men — to leave their families and the relative comforts of their homes to fight and die in places where they have no ties? How can we stop others from following in their footsteps? Learn more »
Dr. Marie Madeleine Togo is the minister of health for the Republic of Mali, responsible for protecting her almost 17 million fellow citizens from all kinds of diseases and dangers. That covers a lot of people and myriad maladies, but her work to eliminate Guinea worm disease goes beyond a professional interest in public health.
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This month, the United Nations turned over the responsibility for Liberia’s security to the Liberian government. It’s the first time in 13 years that the government has been solely in charge of keeping the peace. Learn more »
Jordan Ryan, vice president for peace programs, may be relatively new to The Carter Center, but his connection to President and Mrs. Carter dates back to the ’70s.
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When it comes to eliminating disease, sometimes it’s not only what you know, it’s also who you know. River blindness is so pervasive in Africa that many global experts have believed it could only be controlled, not eliminated. But Uganda intends to rid itself of the parasite that causes the disease, and it’s using one of its greatest resources to do it: women.
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Welcome to the Carter Center’s new website which embraces new tools, new technology, and new servers. The result? A new and improved website with an updated look. Learn more »
Welcome to the Carter Center’s new website which embraces new tools, new technology, and new servers. The result? A new and improved website with an updated look. Learn more »
Parasites and bacteria have no respect for international borders. Many international frontiers are marked by rivers and lakes; but the water fleas that host Guinea worm larvae, the mosquitoes that transmit lymphatic filariasis and malaria, and the flies that spread river blindness and trachoma don't care which side they're on.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer, The Carter Center
The Carter Center operates under the firm conviction that people are capable of solving their own challenges, and our role is to provide them the tools and training to do it. Learn more »
ELMO (short for Election Monitoring) is a Carter Center created electronic data collection and analysis system. Since its introduction in 2011, ELMO has gradually rendered paper checklists obsolete. Equipped with ELMO, observers can submit their checklist data — with more detail than ever before — to headquarters in real time using touchscreen tablets or smartphones. Computers continuously aggregate the data for staff to analyze.
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One simple way we can help people dealing with mental illness is by choosing our words with care. How we speak and write about mental illness can help either reinforce or break down stereotypes. The Carter Center has long worked to reduce stigma by providing fellowships to journalists covering mental health. Learn more »
Last fall, 18 journalists met at The Carter Center to discuss an underreported health problem: mental illnesses. The meeting was part of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism, which aim to enhance public understanding of mental health issues and reduce stigma and discrimination against people with mental illnesses through balanced and accurate reporting. Three fellows share their experience.
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Without information, it is almost impossible to ensure your rights are protected, improve your economic situation, or make your voice heard. In case you missed “The Power of Information” at The Carter Center on March 15, 2016, an archived webcast of this Conversations at The Carter Center event can be viewed here. Learn more »
By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
During my 18 months at The Carter Center, I’ve been struck repeatedly not only by the frequency of our successes, but also by the chance to appreciate them on two vastly different scales. Learn more »
Posted by the U.S. State Department to Moscow during the Mikhail Gorbachev era, Mary Ann Peters had an up-close view of the Soviet system. "The isolation and repression of the people were palpable," said Peters, a former U.S. ambassador and now chief executive officer of The Carter Center. "We in the embassy knew that talking to people on the streets would get them in real trouble, so we refrained for their sakes." Learn more »
It's election day in Georgetown, Guyana, and taxi driver Kirk Embrack can't stop smiling. "I'm always an optimist," he says. "I would like to see Guyana be back to the days of old, when it was the breadbasket of the Caribbean."
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By Nandi Vanka, program assistant, Democracy Program
Impartial election observers help build confidence in the integrity of the voting process, and their assessments and recommendations help protect voters’ rights. Learn more »
By Chris Hale, associate director, Global Access to Information Program
“Information is power” is a refrain most of us have heard before. The work of The Carter Center’s Global Access to Information Program rests not only on a firm belief that information is power, but that the right to access information is the basic currency for democratic participation and an active and full exercise of citizenship. Learn more »
The world’s two great superpowers could achieve more progress if there were less suspicion and more cooperation between them, participants in a series of bilateral Carter Center forums say. Learn more »
By spearheading eradication and elimination programs, The Carter Center works to wipe out preventable diseases in ways that help people acquire the tools, knowledge, and resources they need to transform their own lives.
Learn about five Carter Center health programs working to make preventable diseases a distant memory.
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Using data-driven measurements and monitoring — and working closely with federal ministries of health and affected communities — the Carter Center-led Guinea worm eradication campaign has driven the global incidence of Guinea worm disease down to only 22 cases reported in 4 endemic countries in 2015, a reduction of more than 99.99 percent since 1986.
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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter received back-to-back honors this week in appreciation of his efforts to promote peace and human rights. Learn more »
In case you missed “Stories from 100 Elections” at The Carter Center on Dec. 2, 2015, an archived webcast of this Conversations at The Carter Center event can be viewed below. Learn more »
For five years, Christophe Kabwita has been trying to reclaim what is rightfully his while also trying to keep his family sheltered, fed, and healthy.
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See where cases of Guinea worm were reported in 2016 and what the Center is doing to wipe them out.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer, The Carter Center
Carter Center founders Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have been an inspiration for our work for more than three decades. With President Carter’s recent announcement that he is in treatment for melanoma, many of our friends have asked what the plans are for Carter Center programs without the Carters. Learn more »
The people of Myanmar took a major step in moving their country toward democratic rule, turning out in large numbers to cast their ballots in November 2015 elections. Learn more »
Success in sports is said to be 90 percent mental. Even for a physically gifted athlete like Chamique Holdsclaw, that number may be low. Learn more »
Christine Akello thought she was safe. Having survived about three decades of civil war and displacement in Uganda, she thought she had seen the worst.
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Last May in Guyana, The Carter Center celebrated its 100th election observation mission. In this Q&A, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who led the Center’s first election mission to Panama in 1989 and 38 of the 99 that followed, discusses three decades of elections, remembering ones that made history, ones that put his life in danger, and one that brought tears to his eyes. Learn more »
By Dr. Gregory Noland, epidemiologist
In honor of Malaria Day in the Americas, we asked Carter Center expert and epidemiologist Dr. Gregory Noland to explain how fighting the disease in Hispaniola differs from strategies employed in Africa. Learn more »
After more than 50 years of oppressive military rule, the southeast Asian nation of Myanmar is emerging from isolation and taking its first tentative steps toward democracy. Learn more »
In case you missed “Syria: In Search of Solutions” at The Carter Center on Oct. 13, 2015, an archived version can be viewed below. Learn more »
By Ben Selkow, 2010-11 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow and documentary filmmaker
In summarizing his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experience, war veteran and former U.S. Army Captain Luis Carlos Montalván says, “A disproportionate amount of time is spent thinking about the past than your average person. Learn more »
By Matthew Nyanplu, journalist from Monrovia, Liberia
In the last few years, there has been an awakening in the consciousness of Liberian communities that people living with mental illness are a valuable part of society and represent an important resource for social transformation and community cohesion. Learn more »
"He has hair in his eye," a community volunteer told trichiasis surgeon Belay Bayissasse in 2006. For Bayissasse, now the Trachoma Control Program officer for The Carter Center in Ethiopia, it was a familiar phrase he heard while working at a local health clinic in the Amhara region.
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In case you missed “A Conversation with the Carters” on Sept. 15 at The Carter Center, an archived version of the webcast can be viewed below. Learn more »
By Donald Hopkins, M.D., is special advisor, Guinea Worm Eradication Program, The Carter Center
Donald Hopkins, M.D., is special advisor to the Guinea Worm Eradication Program at The Carter Center and has been leading the effort to eradicate this neglected disease for over 25 years. Listen below as he tells NPR’s Robin Young about the Center’s efforts to rid the world of this ancient and painful affliction. Learn more »
Peru's media landscape was shaken last year when El Comercio — one of Peru's oldest and most influential newspapers — acquired a majority stake in the media company Epensa. In response, El Comercio's biggest rival, La República, filed a lawsuit alleging monopolistic practices.
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Kelly Callahan was 8 years old when she unwittingly charted her life's course. "I was sitting under the dining table with my neighbor's dog, listening to my mother's conversation about Liberia," Callahan said. "I thought, 'Yeah — I'm going to go there.' And from then on, I always knew I would go to Africa. I just didn't know why or for what."
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At a recent TEDWomen 2015 conference, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter spoke out against violence directed toward women and named abuse of women and girls as the number one human rights violation in the world. Learn more »
In poverty-stricken, mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo, The Carter Center advocates for mining reform and human rights.
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Peter Onuchukwu is a subsistence farmer who has lived all his life in the farm community of Ibu in Okigwe local government area of Nigeria. He is only 65 years old, but ever since 2006, he has been unable to see the lush green leaves on his farm or the yields hanging from his Orange tree just a few feet from his doorsteps in Imo state, southeastern Nigeria.
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By Dr. John Bartlett, senior project adviser, Mental Health Program
In 1993, my 92-year-old mother suffered a severe heart attack. After two months in the hospital, she returned home a changed woman. On the day of her heart attack, she had been dancing around in her famous red pantsuit with her grandchildren, but back at home following her hospital stay, she would sit on the sofa, motionless, not talking very much, and eating less. Learn more »
The Carter Center launched its fourth election observation mission in Guyana at an important time in the country's history.
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Christopher Olanya, now in his 60s, has survived the brutalities of war, the trauma of displacement, and the ravages of disease in his native Uganda. He has become an unlikely symbol of hope in the mission to eliminate onchocerciasis, a parasitic infection commonly known and feared as river blindness.
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In 1999, Guinea worm disease took Nigerian farmer Abdullahi Rabiu to the edge. With a reported 84 worms exiting his body through skin blisters, Rabiu could do little more than hope to survive.
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The chanting started soon after Jennie Lincoln and her partner entered the school in the Chiriqui province in Panama on May 7, 1989.
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Over a decade ago, Laura Neuman attended a gathering in one of India's poorest states to watch colleagues read public documents aloud to villagers.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer, The Carter Center
Passion and courage abound at The Carter Center. These two valuable resources compel and sustain expatriate staff and hundreds of in-country employees and volunteers who work to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope. Learn more »
David Carroll, director of the Carter Center’s Democracy Program, has been in the field for about 40 of the Center’s election observation missions and helped manage another 30 or so from headquarters in Atlanta. On the eve of the Center’s 100th election mission, which will take place in Guyana on May 11, he sat down to explain how election observation works and how the field has changed since 1989, when the Center began its election work. Learn more »
Twenty-six years ago, in May 1989, The Carter Center sent its first-ever team of election observers to Panama, where their work exposed General Manuel Noriega's scheme to falsify tally sheets to swing the elections in favor of his handpicked candidate. It established The Carter Center as a leader in what was then the still relatively new field of election observation.
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In 2014, Carter Center health programs assisted in the distribution of more drug treatments for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) than in any previous year, demonstrating the Center’s commitment to alleviating suffering and improving the lives of those who live in the world’s poorest and most isolated communities. Learn more »
The Carter Center began its work in Haiti and the Dominican Republic after a 2006 recommendation by the Center-sponsored International Task Force for Disease Eradication declared it is “technically feasible, medically desirable, and economically beneficial” to eliminate both malaria and lymphatic filariasis from the shared island of Hispaniola. Learn more »
In case you missed “Peace in Liberia, 10 Years Later” at The Carter Center, an archived version of the webcast can be viewed below. Learn more »
As the Ebola epidemic escalated in Liberia last fall, the nation's ministries and international public health agencies asked The Carter Center to help mobilize communities to identify cases of the disease and prevent its spread.
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By Katherine Kam, 2012-2013 recipient of a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism
Civil wars, a country in ruins, a traumatized population of four million people, and only one psychiatrist for the entire West African country of Liberia. When the country’s Ministry of Health invited The Carter Center to help build mental health services in the conflict’s aftermath, questions abounded. Learn more »
Many times, the best way to learn something is by doing it. That's why Cyrille Ebotoko and Marie Danielle Luyoyo Pwenika left their homes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in November to serve as Carter Center short-term observers in Tunisia's presidential elections.
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On Feb. 10, 2015, three human rights defenders joined President Carter for a discussion on protecting the rights of women and girls, with a special emphasis on women and peacemaking and on the role religious leaders can play in this effort. Learn more »
The successful expansion of Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism in Colombia has led to increased reporting on topics of depression, PTSD, anxiety, and post-conflict trauma. Watch the video below to learn more about how journalism fellows in Colombia are breaking down barriers and transforming public perception of mental illness.
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By Yawei Liu, director, China Program
The relationship between the U.S. and China is an incredibly important one. In the 36 years since former U.S. President Jimmy Carter normalized relations between the two superpowers, the countries have developed a productive and mutually beneficial relationship. But suspicion and mistrust still exist. Much of the Carter Center’s work in China in the last few years has involved advancing U.S.-China relations, in part by nurturing the next generation of leaders in both nations. Learn more »
The Forum on Women, Religion, Violence & Power will connect activists across the globe, host roundtable video discussions among them and the general public, highlight success stories, and serve as a resource library and archive.
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When student protesters took to the streets in Tunisia at the beginning of the Arab Spring, 55-year-old Kalthoum Kannou was by their side.
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A special exhibition exploring the challenges and benefits of eradicating disease runs Jan. 13 – July 12, 2015, at the American Museum of Natural History. Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, developed in collaboration with The Carter Center, uses stunning photography, videography, and artifacts to highlight several global efforts to fight infections. Chief among these is the campaign led by The Carter Center that may soon eradicate Guinea worm disease. Learn more »
Dr. Thomas H. Bornemann, director of the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program, answers questions on the importance of the 30th Annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy, progress made over the past three decades, and challenges that lie ahead. Learn more »
Peace Habomugisha has an office in Kampala, Uganda, but it's usually empty. As the Carter Center's representative in Uganda, Habomugisha typically can be found out in the field, keeping the river blindness program on track. She makes sure health workers are distributing medication in the right doses at the right times and health education is being delivered effectively.
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By Ambassador (ret.) Mary Ann Peters, chief executive officer
Long before I joined The Carter Center as its chief executive officer in August, I knew of its amazing work as an action-oriented nongovernmental organization improving the lives of people worldwide. It is a great honor to join this mission-driven group that pursues with such vigor and effectiveness the vision of President and Mrs. Carter for peace and global human rights. Learn more »
When Tunisians took to the polls on Sunday, Nov. 23, to elect a president of their choice in a genuine democratic election, a Carter Center team of 85 were on hand to observe the election process and report on its fairness. Learn more »
On Nov. 5, 2014, in partnership with The Elders, The Carter Center produced a live webcast of the Conversations event “Building a Lasting Peace: Where are the Women?” Learn more »
On Sunday, Nov. 23, Tunisians will do something they've never done before: go to the polls to elect the president of their choice in a genuine democratic election.
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Seattle Times columnist Jonathan Martin began his Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in September 2013 and planned to cover the Affordable Care Act. He was one of six U.S. and four international journalists selected for the annual program.
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By Dr. John Stremlau, vice president, peace programs.
Last week, I was in Mozambique to observe the country’s fifth national election since the end of a bitter civil war that raged for 15 years following the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975. The election was mostly peaceful and far more competitive, transparent, and inclusive than earlier ones we observed. Learn more »
By Amy Standen, 2013-2014 recipient, Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism
On Oct. 10, through a partnership between The Carter Center and PsychCentral.com, dozens of bloggers will participate in the fourth annual blog party, publishing their thoughts about mental health in observance of World Mental Health Day. Learn more »
It is difficult to reconcile Abdullahi Rabiu with the world record he is believed to hold. An athletic feat or sportsman's event seems likely. But could this incredibly fit, healthy, energetic Nigerian really be the man known for having the most Guinea worms emerge from his body at one time? No one else is lining up to lay claim to his title or number: 84.
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Watch former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s video message from the Social Good Summit in New York City on Sept. 21, 2014. Learn more »
Thanks to an in-kind donation, The Carter Center has published a new mobile application, "Guinea Worm: Countdown to Zero," which allows users to track the progress of the Center's Guinea Worm Eradication Program. The free Android app, developed by Big Nerd Ranch, features news and information, ways to get involved, and photographs from the field. But most important, the app allows users to count down the remaining number of cases of Guinea worm disease left in the world.
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By Dr. Frank Richards, director, River Blindness Elimination Program.
Dr. Frank Richards leads the Carter Center’s efforts to eliminate river blindness (also known as onchocerciasis), a parasitic disease transmitted by the bites of infected black flies. On Aug. 12, 2014, The Carter Center held a special ceremony in northern Uganda to celebrate the distribution of the 200 millionth Mectizan® drug treatment, used to eliminate river blindness, supported by The Carter Center worldwide. The following is based on Dr. Richards’ speech at the event. Learn more »
By Dr. John Hardman, chief executive officer.
In September, I will step down as president and CEO of The Carter Center after more than 20 tremendously fulfilling years. I have been awed, inspired, and challenged by the way founders Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have used their influence to make a difference in the world. Learn more »
By Jay Beck, coordinator, Carter Center Weekend.
This year, we moved our annual Carter Weekend fundraiser from February to late June where we gathered amid the majestic mountains of Vail, Colorado, for a weekend of shared laughs and adventures, culminating in an auction to benefit the Center’s work to advance peace and health worldwide. Learn more »
The Carter Center's pioneering efforts to eradicate Guinea worm disease in South Sudan are featured in the documentary "Lifelines: How to Slay a Dragon," which was broadcast outside the United States on Al Jazeera English.
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By Mulat Zerihun Lemu, regional manager, Carter Center trachoma and malaria control projects in the Amhara region of Ethiopia.
I learned how great a need there was for eye services in my community during the 10 years I spent working for the Ethiopian government as an ophthalmic expert. Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, and trachoma is a major cause of this disability in my country. Learn more »
The Carter Center thanks CAF – Development Bank of Latin America – for renewing its support of our Americas Program work to strengthen peace, dialogue, democracy, and human rights in the Western Hemisphere.
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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will provide remarks at an exhibit of Chinese paintings to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the normalization of U.S.-China relations on Thursday, July 17, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Center’s Cecil B. Day Chapel. The exhibit is co-sponsored by The Carter Center and the Chinese Artists Association, which is China’s premier art institution with 6,000 members. Learn more »
As a young Kenyan nurse, posted over ten years ago to a remote mission hospital in war-torn southern Sudan, Antonella Lomong'o was horrified by her first encounter with Guinea worm disease. "I saw this woman come crawling across the floor, crying out in pain," Lomong'o remembered. "She had several worms hanging off her leg, and I was shocked. I'd never seen this before."
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Tara Brant spent four-and-a-half years working in South Sudan on the front lines of the war on Guinea worm disease. She was a technical assistant and regional coordinator charged with ensuring each case of Guinea worm in her area was contained, educating communities on how to prevent the disease, and tracking down real and rumored outbreaks. She served in South Sudan from 2007 to 2009 and 2011 to 2013. She is currently a graduate student in Liverpool, England. Learn more »
“Today, let us renew our resolve to ensure that 2014 is the last year the world reports cases of Guinea worm disease.” – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Learn more »
By Paige Rohe, assistant director, Health Programs.
It may be tempting to hear about a neglected disease like trachoma and the 390 million people globally at risk and think of trachoma only as another sad statistic in a world where there is too much suffering and where there are not enough solutions. Yet, while trachoma is a disease of poverty, it also was once much more prolific than many people know. Until only a few decades ago, trachoma was endemic to the United States and my home state of Georgia. Learn more »
A leader in the eradication and elimination of diseases, The Carter Center is fighting six preventable diseases — Guinea worm, river blindness, trachoma, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, and malaria — by using health education and simple, low-cost methods.
The following slideshow illustrates some of the fundamental tools and approaches used by The Carter Center to help build a healthier and more peaceful world.
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Mahendra Gwacha stood with pride as he listened to his supervisor's instructions at the Bagh Bhairab Temple in Kirtipur, Nepal, and then he and his fellow temporary police officers, or myadi prahari, got to work carrying tables and chairs from a nearby elementary school to transform the 900-year-old holy site to a polling place for the next day's constituent assembly election.
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By Dr. Jennifer McCoy, director, Americas Program.
Panama’s elections were full of contradictions and tensions. Defying the polls, the winning candidate, Juan Carlos Varela, was the sitting vice president estranged from the president and running in opposition. With the possibility of the governing party continuing in office for the first time since the ouster of Manuel Noriega in 1990, fears of a growing concentration of power contributed to Panamanians rejecting the party that had led the highest economic growth rates in the hemisphere and a president with over 60 percent approval ratings. Learn more »
Ethiopia's pioneering efforts to eliminate blinding trachoma, in partnership with The Carter Center, Lions Clubs International Foundation, and others, are featured in the documentary series "Lifelines: The Quest for Global Health," which will be broadcast outside the United States on Al Jazeera English. The series also will highlight the Center's Guinea Worm Eradication Program in South Sudan and the River Blindness Elimination Program in Uganda. Learn more »
The Carter Center’s community justice advisors (CJAs) are bringing free legal services – and awareness of how the law should work – to urban slums in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. Learn more »
Former President Jimmy Carter appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” on March 25 to discuss his new book, “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power.” Learn more »
The suffering of women and girls can be alleviated when individuals take forceful actions, which can impact larger society, asserts President Carter in his new book “A Call to Action.” Political and religious leaders share a special responsibility, but the fact is that all of us can act within our own spheres of influence to meet these challenges. Learn more »
"A Call to Action," a new book by President Carter available March 25 (Simon & Schuster), urges the end of discrimination and abuse against women, calling it the number one challenge in the world today.
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By Stephanie Palmer, assistant director, Trachoma Control Program
Flies buzzed in our faces as Fatahou Ibrahim, a Nigerien public health student, and I interviewed Assana*, a young woman with the eye disease trichiasis, and her mother, Habiba, sitting on colorful plastic mats beneath a tree. Assana, in her early 20s, said that trichiasis felt as though “someone stuck a needle in my eye, as if someone hit me.” Learn more »
Uganda's pioneering efforts to eliminate river blindness, in partnership with The Carter Center, is featured in an eight-part documentary series, ''Lifelines: The Quest for Global Health,'' slated to air outside the United States on Al Jazeera English starting in April 2014.
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Chris McNaboe knows his Syrian opposition armed groups. For the current conflict, he can tell you exactly when a particular brigade formed from previously separate battalions around Aleppo, Syria; how many people are in the brigade; their reason for forming; and what weapons they have. The primary source for this top-level insider info? Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Learn more »
Two horrific diseases in Nigeria — malaria and lymphatic filariasis (LF) — are being targeted for elimination through a new effort to combine prevention activities, which are detailed in a set of co-implementation guidelines issued on February 18, 2014, by the Federal Ministry of Health with support from The Carter Center.
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A former political prisoner, Dr. Siwakoti now is one of Nepal's most prominent human rights advocates. His passion for human rights stems from his personal knowledge of what happens when a country lacks democracy and an open society.
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By Benedict Dossen, administrator, Liberia Mental Health Program.
Liberia is a West African country nearly the size of Mississippi with a population of 3.8 million. But unlike many other countries, Liberia only has one practicing psychiatrist. The need for mental health services becomes even more pressing in the context of the nation’s recovery from a brutal civil war spanning from the early 1990s through 2003. Learn more »
By Dr. John Hardman, chief executive officer.
The Carter Center is pioneering the use of today’s newest technologies in our efforts to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope in the most isolated and inaccessible places on earth. As a result, we are helping people improve their lives more efficiently and cost-effectively than ever before. Learn more »
At the Carter Center's field office in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, a busy scientific laboratory is devoted to a single cause: the surveillance, and ultimate elimination, of river blindness.
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By Dr. John Stremlau, vice president, peace programs.
The Carter Center was pleased to partner with the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa for a joint election observation mission to Madagascar’s Dec. 20 legislative and second-round presidential elections. Former Mauritius President Cassam Uteem, EISA Executive Director Dr. Denis Kadima, and I co-led the delegation. Learn more »
The success of the Ugandan National Onchocerciasis Program in Abeju means that fewer children will be ostracized because of river blindness. Many of the benefits of Uganda’s National Onchocerciasis Elimination Program, supported by The Carter Center, are readily apparent: reduced blindness and itching, increased productivity, and better overall health outcomes. Learn more »
In early November, The Carter Center reached a trachoma milestone: supporting the distribution of more than 100 million doses of the trachoma-fighting drug Zithromax®, donated by Pfizer Inc. These treatments were provided over the last 11 years to trachoma-endemic communities in six African countries: Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Sudan, and South Sudan. Learn more »
Carter Center expert Dr. John Bartlett, a senior project adviser to the Mental Health Program and organizer of this year’s 29th Annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy, answers your questions submitted via email. Learn more »
The crowded courtyard at Chuahit Health Clinic in North Gondar, Ethiopia, is full of people — elders talking, mothers swaying side to side to soothe their infants, health workers hurrying back and forth between offices. Suddenly, a small corner of the clinic erupts in laughter.
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After casting her ballot this morning in Bhaktapur, 33-year-old Sangita Shrestha felt joy, but the feeling was tempered by a stern message she had for those who will be elected to Nepal's new constituent assembly, "Do your job properly and draft a new constitution as soon as possible."
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Voter turnout was high as Nepalis defied strikes and scattered violence leading up to Nepal's Nov. 19 constituent assembly election. The Carter Center, which has maintained a team of election observers in Nepal since 2007, deployed 66 observers from 31 countries to provide an independent and impartial assessment of this election process and ensure voting was transparent, credible, and fair.
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President Carter spoke with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America about the Center's fight to wipe out trachoma and combat other neglected diseases. No former president has served longer out of office or made such a mark against some of the world's most intractable problems, Stephanopoulos said as he introduced the president. Learn more »
Carter Center expert David Pottie explains the importance of Nepal’s upcoming election and the role of Carter Center observers. Learn more »
On Nov. 5, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter joined Pfizer Inc. CEO Ian Read at Pfizer headquarters in New York City to celebrate major progress in the global campaign against the blinding disease trachoma as the Center prepares to distribute its 100 millionth dose of Zithromax ®, a Pfizer-donated antibiotic used to treat the disease.
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The geographic lines dividing Sudan and South Sudan “are completely blurry, so we focus on the lines that connect us,” Professor Jok Madut Jok, undersecretary in South Sudan’s Ministry of Culture, said during a “Conversations at The Carter Center” on Oct. 15. Learn more »
Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Robert Pastor and his wife, Margy, a fellowship is now available to support the work and study of a summer fellow in the Carter Center’s Americas Program. The founder and former director of the Americas Program, Dr. Pastor was advisor for Latin American affairs on the National Security Council in the Carter White House. Learn more »
A community art group has been helping the Carter Center’s Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA) highlight vital health messages. Learn more »
In rural Liberia, the formal justice system often is not yet working or accepted, and many communities lack legal resources such as a police station or magistrate. They turn instead to village chiefs and elders to keep the peace. Learn more »
On World Mental Health Day, Oct. 10, we here at The Carter Center will pause to reflect upon the many advances in the field of mental health, including improvements in diagnosing and treating mental illnesses, as well as advancing parity for mental health in our health care system. Learn more »
By Laura Neuman, manager, Global Access to Information Program
In celebration of International Right to Know Day on Sept. 28, 2013, The Carter Center and local partners in Liberia hosted a series of activities to raise awareness of the value of freedom of information and to encourage the use and full implementation of the country’s 2010 Freedom of Information Act. Learn more »
Moultrie, Ga., Police Chief Frank N. Lang Sr. recently traveled with the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program to Liberia where he helped train local law enforcement officers on how to support people experiencing a mental health crisis. Learn more »
From their headquarters at Bogotá's Caracol television news, health reporters Paula Bedoya and Fernanda Hernández have covered the flu, prenatal care, eyesight, and cancer. But mental health is one medical topic these two journalists rarely, if ever, tackle.
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The National Council for Behavioral Health has recognized The Carter Center and three other organizations with the 2013 Advocacy Leadership Awards for their contributions to the field of mental health. Learn more »
The Nobel Peace Prize, the playwright Henrik Ibsen, the pop group A-ha — this was pretty much the extent of my knowledge about Norway until recently. But this summer, The Carter Center was invited by the Kingdom of Norway to observe their Internet voting trials in connection with this year’s parliamentary elections, which took place on Monday, Sept. 9. With a first visit in July, I have since learned a great deal more. Learn more »
By Rick Goldsmith, 2013-2014 Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism
I was drawn to WNBA star Chamique Holdsclaw’s story from the day I read a piece on her in the New York Times in early 2012. She’d been the best of the best at her sport, took a great fall, but emerged in apparent recovery as an advocate who was remarkably candid about her own story. Learn more »
On Sept. 10, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, and Carter Center disease eradication expert Dr. Donald R. Hopkins held a special video chat, “Global Health: How We Can Make a Difference,” to kick off a new series called Conversations on Google+ launching later this fall. Learn more »
“Dark Forest, Black Fly,” an independent documentary feature film from award-winning producer Gary Strieker and Cielo Productions, offers an in-depth look at Uganda’s pending triumph against river blindness, a disease that has blinded sufferers in Africa for thousands of years. Learn more »
On Aug. 19-22, the Carter Center’s Access to Justice Project, in collaboration with Liberia’s ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs, trained 30 youth leaders in Kakata on conflict resolution skills and knowledge of the rule of law. Learn more »
Watch the Carter Center’s Far Western Region team observing voter registration for upcoming national and local elections in Nepal and discussing their work. Since 2009, The Carter Center has monitored and reported on issues related to Nepal’s peace process. The Center’s long-term observers are deployed throughout the country and often travel to remote communities to gain an understanding of local perspectives. Learn more »
When Liberian high school student George Toddy failed the math and science sections of his college entrance exam, he was disappointed but not surprised — he had heard that his region had a very high failure rate compared to other parts of the country. Learn more »
By Dr. Tom Frieden, director, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
It was an honor to share the stage with former First Lady Rosalynn Carter at the 18th annual Rosalynn Carter Georgia Mental Health Forum in May. We celebrated the publication of the MMWR Weekly Report Supplement: “Mental Health Surveillance Among Children in the United States — 2005-2011,” the first-ever summary of federal activities tracking children’s mental disorders in the U.S. Learn more »
Top religious leaders, activists, and religious scholars representing more than 15 countries and over 35 faith-based organizations, universities, and religious bodies, who are committed to making concrete gains in women's rights gathered at The Carter Center June 27-29 for the conference "Mobilizing Faith for Women: Engaging the Power of Religion and Belief to Advance Human Rights and Dignity.".
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During its commencement ceremonies May 30, Harvard University presented Carter Center Vice President of Health Programs Dr. Donald Hopkins with an honorary Doctor of Science degree for his leadership in disease eradication, particularly his work on the Center’s campaign to wipe out the water borne affliction Guinea worm disease. Learn more »
Prominent leaders from Sudan and South Sudan have come together twice this spring to discuss how to strengthen peace and create a lasting understanding between the two countries.
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In 2008, Audrey Kasandi remembers traveling to school in a convoy escorted by armed police for safety, and seeing burned down shells of houses and tent villages stretched across fields full of internally displaced people in Kenya's Rift Valley as the country recoiled from post-election violence. Yet when opportunity arose to serve as deputy presiding officer of a polling station in March 2013, she jumped at the chance despite her fears.
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Carter Center and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experts discuss the latest updates on the campaign to wipe out a debilitating parasitic disease, river blindness (onchocerciasis) from the Western Hemisphere via Google+ Hangout On Air. Learn more »
On April 18, 2013, former U.S. First Lady and Carter Center Co-Founder Rosalynn Carter and former Congressman Tony Coelho joined experts from the federal government and other mental health officials to discuss new research published in the American Journal of Public Health’s first theme issue on stigma against people with mental illness at The Carter Center in Atlanta. <p>The theme …</p> Learn more »
Rebecca Palpant Shimkets, assistant director in the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program, describes the stigma facing people with mental illnesses and how the Carter Center’s activities aim to help. Learn more »
By Carter Center Trachoma Control Program Director, Dr. Paul Emerson
This is an excerpt from Carter Center Trachoma Control Program Director Dr. Paul Emerson’s Huffington Post Blog, “The Eye of the Beholder: Why Fighting Trachoma Matters.” Learn more »
By Ben Dunant, Carter Center election observer, Nepal
We sat within walls of mud and thatch that warped gently into corners that flaked at the seams, cross-legged on thick carpets with woven Tibetan patterns. Our hosts in the village of Sikles presented us with local food that arrived in portion after portion, all accompanied by steamy hot glasses of raksi, the milky-colored spirit distilled from harvested millet. Learn more »
The Carter Center is working to enable Tshiamilemba and other local Congolese mining communities to seek redress for such human rights violations and to demand changes moving forward from both mining companies and government.
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By Tina Rezvani, assistant program coordinator, Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism
Recently, the Carter Center Mental Health Program hosted the panel discussion “Beyond Stigma: Bringing the Conversation about Mental Illness Forward,” on the stigma of mental illness among young adults. One topic that proved especially important was the role social media plays in young people’s lives and, consequently, their mental health. Learn more »
Looking back, Nicolae Ciorogan, 38, might tell you that his life has been a journey to learn about many different kinds of people — as a child growing up in Transylvania, Romania, a documentary filmmaker in the Peruvian Andes, and as a television photojournalist in Boston.
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On March 5, the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) awarded Dr. Adetokunbo O. Lucas the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award for Dr. Lucas’ “outstanding humanitarian efforts and achievements that have contributed to improving the health of humankind.” The NFID, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public and health care professionals about infectious disease, has given the award. Learn more »
Carter Center election observers in Kenya reported longs lines outside many polling stations on March 4, some nearly a kilometer long, and voters waited in lines for up to six hours or more.
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It was hard to feel the chill of winter in San Diego, Calif., as donors and supporters from around the world came together for the Carter Center’s annual Winter Weekend fundraiser at the Hotel Del Coronado on Feb. 20-24. Now in its 21st year, the Winter Weekends have raised more than $19 million to support the Center’s work. Learn more »
Alidu Kemisa cannot seem to stop rubbing her arms and touching her head as she describes the symptoms that have plagued her for more than ten years: pain, intense itching, and roughening of her skin.
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There is no vaccine or medicine to fight Guinea worm disease; instead, The Carter Center uses four main interventions to lead the international campaign against the debilitating parasite. Learn more »
Ronald McDonald House Charities® (RMHC®) has awarded The Carter Center $200,000 to support the Mental Health Program in Liberia. The funding will be used to train mental health care providers and to build supportive community environments that will benefit individuals suffering from mental illnesses and their families. Learn more »
By Ellen Lust, a Carter Center political analyst in Jordan
Jordan’s Jan. 23 parliamentary elections are taking place in a climate of uncertainty, due to dissatisfaction with the pace of electoral reform and frustration with the state of the economy. In late-November there were demonstrations against the monarch, sparked by a sharp increase in gas prices. Learn more »
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Carter Center Guinea worm experts Drs. Donald R. Hopkins and Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben will host a media roundtable via Google+ Hangout to announce the provisional Guinea worm case totals for 2012 and discuss significant progress in the international Guinea worm eradication campaign led by The Carter Center. Learn more »
“In all of these countries, the path to democracy is full of challenges,” said Hrair Balian, director of the Conflict Resolution Program at the Center. “The successful outcome will depend on the level of inclusiveness and tolerance of the new orders being created.”
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By Lindsay Rakers, senior program associate for The Carter Center
Eight years ago, the urine of 12-year-old Jude Ogwu was consistently red from blood. His father, chief of Aboh, a village in southeast Nigeria, took him to the hospital for treatment but received none. The hospital lacked medicine and the resources needed to treat Ogwu, who was suffering. Learn more »
When The Carter Center began leading the battle against Guinea worm disease in 1986, some 3.5 million children and adults around the world suffered from it. Today the disease affects fewer than 200 people in isolated pockets of Sub-Saharan Africa. One of those places is South Sudan’s Equatoria State, where the South Sudan Guinea Worm Eradication Program — assisted by the Center and partners — is mounting an all-out effort to track down and treat every case and prevent new ones from breaking out. This story takes us to the frontlines where one of the final battles is taking place: Mogos, South Sudan.
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In early 2010, remote Baimiao Township in Sichuan Province, China, was dubbed the "naked government" when local officials posted its budget online, reportedly disclosing everything from salaries to the cost of notebooks and paper cups.
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While other voters squeezed into polling stations and stood for hours in the Sierra Leone heat to cast ballots in the country's Nov. 17 general election, John Mussa moved straight to the head of the line. One advantage to having only one arm, he said, "is you don't have to wait in the queue to vote."
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It’s the horrific plague, the “fiery serpent” of the Bible, found in Egyptian mummies, and may be the inspiration of the modern symbol for medicine. Found today only in the most isolated and neglected communities of the world, Guinea worm disease once afflicted approximately 3.5 million people in Africa and Asia. Learn more »
A keyboard, an Internet connection, and a comfy coffee shop chair is one way to do research. But it's not the way for Dr. Brandon Kohrt, consultant to the Carter Center's Mental Health Liberia Project, who needs a good off-road vehicle and a compassionate ear to gather information about the beliefs, feelings, and experiences Liberians have surrounding mental illnesses.
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Stewart was a summer 2012 graduate assistant for the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program. She traveled to Ethiopia to help survey families about the Center’s trachoma prevention activities in partnership with the local communities. Learn more »
The Nov. 17, 2012, presidential and parliamentary elections were the first self-administered elections to be conducted in Sierra Leone since the end of the civil war in 2002, representing an important test for the country's democratic consolidation.
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By Nick Jahr, long-term observer
Sierra Leone’s last election was a historic one: the first time the country’s opposition took power more or less peacefully. This also will be a landmark of another sort: the first election conducted solely …</p> Learn more »
Former U.S. President and Carter Center Founder Jimmy Carter is answering questions from the public via Facebook, Twitter, and this blog starting Oct. 19, 2012, as part of a year-long commemoration of the Center’s 30th anniversary waging peace and fighting disease worldwide. Learn more »
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has been named the 2012 recipient of the CDC Foundation’s Hero Award. The foundation honored President Carter for three decades of visionary leadership focused on saving lives, reducing suffering, and providing hope for millions of the world’s poorest people, as well as for his commitment to achieving a more peaceful and healthy world for us all. Learn more »
At a special ceremony at The Carter Center in Atlanta today, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former Merck CEO Dr. Roy Vagelos, former Carter Center Executive Director, Dr. Bill Foege, and other guests and dignitaries from around the world gathered to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Merck’s Mectizan® Donation Program. Learn more »
In Katanga Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), thousands of children spend their days digging, breaking stones, and transporting and washing minerals, risking exposure to dangerous levels of radiation, potential pulmonary diseases, and physical and sexual abuse by peers and adults.
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It was late afternoon in Dorum, southern Niger, when a man and his elderly mother rode in on a motorcycle. The woman's calm façade belied the excruciating pain she felt. An hour-long ride outdoors through dusty roads in the midday sun comprised some of the worst conditions a woman with an advanced eye disease could face. But as agonizing as it was, the journey likely saved her eyesight
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In Katanga Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), thousands of children spend their days digging, breaking stones, and transporting and washing minerals, risking exposure to dangerous levels of radiation, potential pulmonary diseases, and physical and sexual abuse by peers and adults. Learn more »
By Rebecca Palpant Shimkets, assistant director, Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism
The voices of millions will join together this month for breast cancer awareness in walks and runs while pink ribbons are proudly displayed on cars, pins, and airplanes. The walls of secrecy and shame that surrounded breast cancer patients and survivors until recently are toppling with increased public understanding and advances in treatments. Learn more »
For the first time, former U.S. President and Carter Center Founder Jimmy Carter will answer questions from the public via Facebook, Twitter, and this blog, as part of a year-long commemoration of the Center’s 30th anniversary of waging peace and fighting disease worldwide. Learn more »
In Guatemala 25 years ago, on a coffee farm situated at the slope of a volcano, Frank O. Richards Jr., M.D., sat under a thinly thatched roof talking with an old man. Chickens foraged on the dirt floor, and a mangy dog slept in the corner.
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On Oct. 10, through a partnership between The Carter Center and PsychCentral.com, dozens of bloggers will participate in a blog party, publishing their thoughts about mental health in observance of World Mental Health Day. “Mental illness affects all of us, but there are still many myths and misconceptions about these disorders,” said former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Learn more »
Ahead of key Oct. 7 presidential elections in Venezuela, The Carter Center is conducting an independent study mission to follow the campaign, with political and electoral analysts interviewing political actors and technical experts on the ground. The Carter Center also will send a small group of experts for an informal presence on election day to interview political actors and voters. Learn more »
During Egypt's January 2011 revolution, human rights researcher and blogger Fatma Emam demonstrated for change in Tahrir Square day after day with thousands of other men and women. Post-revolution though, she found women's rights left behind.
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The Carter Center and BASF continue to work together to make medical history in Africa. The latest donation of nearly 6,000 liters of the BASF larvicide ABATE® will be used to combat Guinea worm and river blindness, two neglected tropical diseases that prey on some of the world’s most disadvantaged communities. Learn more »
Only a few years ago, Chiscop was working as a deputy chief editor for the social issues section of Iasi Daily Newspaper, a major newspaper in a cultural and academic hub in eastern Romania. Learn more »
The Carter Center is encouraging less partisan and more professional media reporting on Venezuela's electoral process through a series of workshops ahead of the country's Oct. 7 presidential election, offering one of the few spaces where journalists from diverse media participate together in the polarized society.
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Today marks an important milestone in President Carter’s life—he has had the longest post-White House career of any president. That’s 31 years of waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope since he left office in January 1981, which the former President says has been some of the most rewarding work of his life. Learn more »
Since President Carter's groundbreaking efforts in the White House to place human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, the goal of securing human rights for all — civil, political, social, and economic rights — has driven the Carter Center's work to advance peace and health in more than 70 nations. Learn more »
Since President Carter's groundbreaking efforts in the White House to place human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, the goal of securing human rights for all — civil, political, social, and economic rights — has driven the Carter Center's work to advance peace and health in more than 70 nations.
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The Carter Center’s China Program recently launched a “China in Africa” website to feature original content from African contributors expressing their views on China’s impact in their respective communities. The project aims to bridge the gap of understanding between Chinese decision-makers and African communities about China’s impact on the African continent. <p>China Program Director Yawei Liu explains the project.…</p> Learn more »
For residents of Bor Town, Grand Bassa County, Liberia, a trip to the nearest magistrate's office to solve a dispute isn't just an expense that many in this subsistence-farming community cannot afford; it is also a major trip — eight hours walking by footpath, one way.
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An additional air date has been added across the U.S. for “Foul Water Fiery Serpent,” an independent documentary feature film that follows dedicated health workers — including Carter Center staff and national health partners, as well as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter — engaged in a final battle to eradicate Guinea worm disease in Africa. Learn more »
With fewer than 1,100 worldwide cases of Guinea worm disease reported in 2011, and fewer than 600 cases expected during 2012, experts believe the quarter-century-long eradication campaign, led by The Carter Center, is at a crucial tipping point.
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The Carter Center is pioneering new technology that allows observations from polling stations across a country to be transmitted to headquarters immediately, allowing a richer picture of an election to emerge in real time – key to being able to determine quicker if an election is credible. Learn more »
Under the leadership of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, the Carter Center's Mental Health Program has increased awareness about mental health issues, informed public policy, and reduced stigma and discrimination against those with mental illnesses.
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In June, Egyptians chose the first democratically elected president in the country's history, and despite the challenging circumstances of the process, many voters still felt the moment's importance.
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By Amy Patterson, assistant director, Malaria Control Program
At the invitation of the Nigerian government, The Carter Center began health program work in Nigeria in 1988. In 2010, the largest long-lasting insecticidal net distribution effort in history to fight malaria was launched in Nigeria, which bears more deaths from this disease than any other country. Learn more »
A limited Carter Center mission witnessed the June 16-17 runoff election for Egypt's president, with 90 witnesses from 36 countries deployed to follow polling, counting, and those parts of the tabulation processes to which the Center had access. Learn more »
In the White House, President Jimmy Carter appointed 57 minority judges and 41 female judges to the federal judiciary, more than all previous presidents combined. But he recognized at the time that, when it came to diversifying judicial appointments, his efforts were “just a beginning.” Learn more »
If you ask Margaret Ballah to describe a typical day at work, she will tell you that there is no such thing. Every day Ballah rises at dawn, dons her crisp white uniform and shiny mental health clinician badge and walks several miles to Gbarzon Health Center in rural Grand Gedeh County, southeastern Liberia.
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Legendary eradication expert Dr. Donald R. Hopkins received the prestigious Pumphandle Award June 3 from the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), honoring his outstanding contributions to applied epidemiology. Learn more »
A chain of 1,000 origami paper cranes, each painstakingly created by members of the Carter Center’s fall 2011 intern class, was recently hung in the Children’s Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, Japan, in honor of President and Mrs. Carter. Learn more »
Voting began Wednesday in Egypt, where more than 50 million registered voters may choose the first genuinely democratically elected president in the country’s history. In the Al-Sayeda Zeinab and Al-Sayeda Aisha neighborhoods of Cairo, hundreds of people lined up outside polling stations ahead of poll opening at 8 a.m. Learn more »
The Carter Center has deployed 22 international election witnesses to Egypt's upcoming May 23-24 presidential elections and will send a larger delegation of 80 witnesses from over 35 nations several days before the election, led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Many of the Center's witnesses have been with The Carter Center in Egypt since November 2011 and have witnessed the lower and upper house parliamentary elections too.
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Ask about the time he nearly died from cerebral malaria during a Guinea worm surveillance trip, or his supervisory visit to a town under siege, or the nights he spent stuck in a car with no food, little water, and once with three flat tires, and Dr. Nabil Aziz Mikhail will tell you he doesn't like to sit in his office
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The Republic of Sudan has won a long-fought battle against river blindness in Abu Hamad, the most isolated focus area in the world. That the government, with help from The Carter Center and partners, has stopped transmission of this debilitating disease in a remote community of more than 100,000 is an inspiring health success for Sudan, for Africa, and for the world. Learn more »
The Carter Center’s work to improve access to mental health care in Liberia is highlighted as one of 14 nonprofit recipients of a new foundation, Focusing Philanthropy, which seeks to connect potential donors across the United States with charities demonstrating strong achievements and excellent fiscal management. Learn more »
U.S. President Barack Obama Names Dr. William Foege National Medal of Freedom Recipient Learn more »
In view of the pace of change in political events taking place in the Middle East and North Africa, it’s not surprising that the context of an interview completed on April 6 would already be slightly outdated just weeks later. Learn more »
Use becomes more rare as Center, partners make major strides against the disease. The wishbone-like tweezers, folded from pieces of tin cans, look like a charm or pendant, but have a gruesome purpose. Learn more »
he Carter Center has become a global leader in the eradication and elimination of diseases, focusing efforts to build health and hope in some of the poorest and most isolated places on earth.
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The Carter Center's peace programs have retained a presence in South Sudan after observing the 2011 referendum on independence in the hopes of contributing to a lasting peace and the establishment of strong democratic foundations.
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Zerihun Tadesse Gebrelassie barely remembers his mother rushing his baby brother to a hospital in Ethiopia. Many patients, long lines, and few health workers made her wish she had a relative — maybe one who was a nurse — who could help her son. His little brother survived, but Dr. Zerihun says his mother never forgot that scene.
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“Foul Water Fiery Serpent,” a documentary feature film that follows dedicated health workers — including Carter Center staff and national health partners, as well as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter — engaged in a final battle to eradicate Guinea worm disease in Africa, will air on American Public Television stations nationwide beginning April. Learn more »
For health workers in Mexico and Guatemala, the start of the new year meant major change. Thanks to the efforts of the Carter Center-sponsored Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA), the two Latin American countries have interrupted transmission of river blindness (onchocerciasis) nationwide. Learn more »
By Paige Rohe, assistant director, Carter Center Communications Department
On a cold December afternoon in 2011, the picture of a smiling teenage girl illuminated the darkened Ivan Allen Pavilion at The Carter Center. Her name was Sarah Crider. More than five years ago, at the age of 14, Sarah died from a preventable complication during treatment at a state-run psychiatric hospital in Atlanta. Learn more »
During 2012, The Carter Center celebrates three decades of waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope. This is the first in a series of anniversary features highlighting the Center's global impact since its founding.
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Completely eliminating a disease from a country twice the size of Texas is no easy task. Salissou Kane, the Carter Center's country representative for Niger learned this time and again during more than two decades fighting Guinea worm in his homeland. Now that the disease has been wiped out nationwide, Kane is using his hard-won knowledge of Niger's complex multicultural communities to tackle to the bacterial eye disease trachoma.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director, Carter Center Office of Public Information
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter joined a 40-member Carter Center delegation to witness the third phase of Egypt’s parliamentary elections Jan. 10-11. The delegation, deployed in Egypt since mid-November for the three-phase election, represents 21 countries. Learn more »
On a warm spring day in the state of Chiapas, villagers in the small hamlet of Jose Maria de Morelos walk uphill on the town's only paved road to reach a small complex of school buildings. But today is not a school day; today, the river blindness elimination brigade is meeting at the school.
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Read firsthand accounts from two of the Center's witnesses in Egypt - Nedra Cherif and Matt Hall - who were deployed to Alexandria and Fayoum governorates during the first round of voting.
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The Carter Center works in some of the world’s most remote and impoverished communities. These are areas beyond where the road ends, with no power grid, and limited access to outside markets. Learn more »
On Oct. 23, Haythem, 28, wrapped himself in a Tunisian flag, stood for four hours in a line that spanned as far as the eye could see on a street in downtown Tunis, and cast a vote for the first time in his life.
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On Nov. 28, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is holding its second democratic multi-party national elections since gaining independence in 1960, and the first to be administered solely by the country’s election commission. Elections in 2006 were overseen by the United Nations. Learn more »
At The Carter Center, we are thankful for all that has been accomplished over the last year: historic elections in Sudan and Tunisia; the end of Guinea worm disease in Ghana; the first graduating class of mental health workers in Liberia; and so much more. Learn more »
The Carter Center and its Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA) are pleased to congratulate three Latin American countries on their recent progress toward eliminating river blindness (onchocerciasis). Learn more »
By Max Lockie, Carter Center long-term observer
Carter Center long-term observer Max Lockie is based in Matadi, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Center established an office in Kinshasa in August and deployed 10 long-term observers to seven provinces: Kinshasa, Bas-Congo, Oriental Province, North Kivu, South Kivu, Katanga, and Kasai Oriental. In September, the Center deployed another 10 long-term observers to the remaining provinces. Learn more »
The Carter Center is partnering with the Consulate General of France in Atlanta and the Georgia Institute of Technology as part of “France-Atlanta 2011,” a series of 15 events being held Oct. 26-Nov. 12, designed to strengthen ties in the fields of science, economics, culture, and humanitarian work. Learn more »
In Congo, a lack of transparent and equitable management of natural resources has excluded most citizens from the benefits of the country’s vast mineral reserves. To address these inequalities, The Carter Center is working to advance economic justice by gathering and publishing information about the mining sector to be used by civil society to support reform in mining practice and policy.
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From Nov. 5-11, 20,000 health workers and volunteers will walk the countryside of western Amhara region, Ethiopia. Their quest: treat every person at risk—approximately 10 million—for trachoma control and screen as needed for malaria. In this Q&A, Paul Emerson, director of the Center's Trachoma Control Program, explains the remarkable results of these "Maltra"—malaria and trachoma—weeks, a collaborate effort between the Lions Clubs International Foundation and The Carter Center.
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Long lines of Tunisians waited for hours to vote on Sunday to choose 217 members of a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution – many casting a ballot for the first time in their lives – in the country's first open and competitive election in decades.
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The Carter Center will observe the Oct. 23 vote in Tunisia - the first Arab Spring country to hold elections - for a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. A selection of questions submitted online are answered below by Carter Center observers on the ground in Tunisia.
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By Paige Rohe, assistant director, news and information, of the Carter Center’s Office of Public Information.
A torrential rain began in Monrovia, Liberia, causing the power to flicker and the Internet to shut down, but Georgia Institute of Technology professor Dr. Ellen Zegura didn’t let the disruption stop the computer and software training session she was holding with Liberia’s first class of mental health clinicians. Learn more »
Once the second-most endemic country in the world, Ghana has stopped transmission of Guinea worm disease with no new cases of the parasitic disease reported for a full year in 2011. With an estimated 180,000 cases in 1989, Ghana’s successful grassroots elimination efforts have resulted in the promise of hopeful, productive lives for its citizens.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center.
Deborah Hakes, assistant director of the Carter Center's Office of Public Information, reports from Liberia, where the Carter Center's international election observation team monitored the country's Oct. 11 elections. Learn more »
Presidential and legislative elections in Liberia on Oct. 11 will be a critical test for the country's transition from war to democratic and constitutional government. A Carter Center delegation will observe those elections, led by His Excellency General Dr. Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria's former head of state.
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In London today, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter addressed an audience of international journalists and partners to announce that the Carter Center-led global campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease has entered its final stage to end this gruesome waterborne parasitic infection. Learn more »
A group of former leaders and human rights experts serve as a watchdog to threats against democratic stability in the Americas and as a voice to strengthen, promote, and protect democracy and human rights. The group aims to bolster the effectiveness of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, approved on Sept. 11, 2001. Learn more »
By Marwa Alkhairo, a Carter Center long-term election observer in northwest Tunisia and Bizerte
Marwa Alkhairo is a Carter Center long-term election observer in northwest Tunisia and Bizerte. "La bas alaik" and "ca va," means "are you well," one phrase said in Arabic, and one in French. These two greetings are indicative of the complexity that one immediately notices upon reaching northwest Tunisia. Learn more »
When Dr Andrew Seidu Korkor describes the debilitating pain caused by Guinea worm disease and how it devastates communities, he's not just making a professional observation. For this national manager of Ghana's Guinea Worm Eradication Program it's personal.
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By Paige Rohe, media relations coordinator for The Carter Center.
Torrential rains in Monrovia, Liberia, Friday morning did not deter dozens of family members and friends from arriving at the Tubman National Institute of Medical Arts hours before graduation ceremonies for the nation’s first mental health clinicians began. No one wanted to miss their loved one become part of their nation’s history and hope for a better future. Learn more »
"I think I have something to share with another country" says Sadi Moussa, explaining why he recently relocated to Mali to help tackle public health problems after almost two decades doing similar work in his home country of Niger.
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Like many Liberian women, Ruth Saye has faced violence, subjugation, and loss as a result of her country's devastating civil war, but she was determined to empower women and help them to heal.
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Misunderstandings and tensions between Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela) and the United States are common, and often reinforced or made worse by charged, politicized reporting in media stories related to these countries. Learn more »
With approximately 95 percent of the world’s remaining Guinea worm cases, South Sudan looks to be the final battleground in the fight to wipe out this debilitating worm worldwide. The Southern Sudan Guinea Worm Eradication Program, together with The Carter Center, has almost 10,000 dedicated local health workers on the ground, working everywhere from the bustling capital of Juba to the most remote villages imaginable. Learn more »
Reporter Michael Biesecker's coverage of mental health issues began with a high-speed car chase following a robbery. In the course of Biesecker's investigation, he found that although the driver was in a psychotic state two weeks before the crime, he had been turned away from the state's psychiatric hospital. Learn more »
Peace is more than the absence of war. There is an inner peace that comes from personal security and personal freedom. Peace also includes the sense of a mother and father that their children will live, that they’ll have food for them to eat, and that they won’t be subject to a lifetime of suffering that could have been prevented. Learn more »
Planned gifts are an excellent way to ensure that The Carter Center continues to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope far into the future, while also offering financial benefits to donors. The new Carter Center planned giving website offers a wealth of information and interactive tools to help potential donors find a plan that fits their goals. Learn more »
A mother’s lullabies and soft caress are common nighttime rituals for children around the world. But throughout Africa, these soothing efforts cannot spare a child the high fevers, wracking chills, nausea, and headache of malaria - potentially fatal disease. Learn more »
By Dr. Janice Cooper, Carter Center's project lead for mental health in Liberia
Dr. Janice Cooper, a native Liberian, is the Carter Center’s project lead for a new mental health initiative that, in partnership with the Liberia Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, is helping the nation build a sustainable mental health care system. This spring, Dr. Cooper began training Liberia’s first cadre of qualified, home-grown mental health clinicians. Learn more »
When Jozefa Ortiz Rosa of Tarrales, Guatemala, started losing her vision, she worried about her future. Her husband had died years before, leaving her with six children to raise and a coffee crop to tend. Her older children had taken over the farming, but she still needed to care for her younger children and grandchildren.
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As the sun rose across Juba on Jan. 9, Lulogo Market area resident Ibrahim, 33, had already waited in line for hours to be among the first to vote in Southern Sudan's historic referendum on self-determination. He clutched a small radio with antenna pointed toward the sky to hear news fragments from BBC and local stations about the referendum.
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Philomena Bloh-Sayeh is surrounded by mounds of documents in boxes stacked on shelves. "These are marriage documents," she says. "You'll see gaps in the years where some of them were lost during the war."
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At bedtime, under a blue mosquito net, two boys lie on a mat and whisper secrets from the day just passed. Six-year-old Thon Mayom falls asleep quickly. He is exhausted from two sessions that day to treat a worm emerging from his knee. His 5-year-old brother, Mawut, drifts off to sleep too. His job is to look after his big brother during the difficult treatment.
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In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, human rights activists often face intimidation and threats of violence, a situation expected to worsen as November 2011 national elections approach. Listen to Sophie Borel talk about why the alert system was established. Learn more »
Paul Emerson entered the modest hut unannounced, knowing what he was hoping to find, but ready for anything. Emerson - director of the Carter Center's Trachoma Control Program - had visited this family before. In 2005, he had accompanied President and Mrs. Carter to Mosebo village, northwest Ethiopia, to help launch a comprehensive trachoma initiative in the region.
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Ratna Osman, acting executive director of Malaysia’s Sisters in Islam, was one of a diverse group of 72 human rights activists and religious scholars from 22 countries to attend the Carter Center’s human rights defenders forum this week in Atlanta. Learn more »
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter urged religious communities to promote, not hinder, women’s rights during his opening remarks at the 2011 Human Rights Defenders Forum taking place at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga., April 3-6. The remarks were a follow up to a speech he gave to the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 2009. Learn more »
From April 3-6, human rights leaders and scholars will gather at The Carter Center to discuss the key challenges that women's rights activists face and ways to work with religious, traditional, and government institutions to advance the protection of these rights. Learn more »
The Carter Center’s health programs enabled a record 35.8 million treatments in 2010 to protect against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in thousands of communities in some of the most remote and forgotten places in Africa and the Americas. Learn more »
Standing in the courtyard of his school in El Xab, Guatemala, his eyes blindfolded, a boy swings a large pole toward a flyshaped piñata. Schoolmates cheer for the boy, who looks about 9 years old. His friends hope that one well-placed strike will smash the fly, releasing oodles of candy. The adults in charge hope the children leave with something more than a handful of treats.
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The Andean-U.S. Dialogue Forum, a citizens' forum created to identify and contribute solutions to multilateral problems and tensions among the Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela) and the United States, has issued a report outlining a common agenda to improve cooperation among the nations. Learn more »
The Carter Center Awards for Guinea Worm Eradication were presented to Nigeria and Niger during a special ceremony held Feb. 17, 2011, in Atlanta, Ga. The two countries, which share a border, join 14 other nations that have wiped out Guinea worm disease since The Carter Center spearheaded the international eradication campaign in 1986. Learn more »
Former U.S. President and Carter Center Founder Jimmy Carter announced today that only three endemic countries remain in the fight against Guinea worm disease, poised to be only the second disease in history—after smallpox—to be eradicated.
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The 2010 launch of a new Carter Center-supported initiative is helping the Azi family and millions of other Nigerians receive greater access to malaria control and prevention, building the opportunity for a healthier future for the entire nation. Learn more »
Carter Center observers witnessed the birth of what is expected to be the world's newest nation, following Southern Sudan's Jan. 9-15 referendum on self-determination, with an overwhelming majority--a reported 98.9 percent--voting for secession from Sudan.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Carter Center observers remain deployed across Sudan and in out-of-country voting locations as voting continues in the referendum on the self-determination of Southern Sudan. Here are images from across Juba on days one and two of voting. Learn more »
In the blistering heat of Nasarawa North, Nigeria, the cool waters of the River Uke beckon all. Women launder clothes, people bathe, girls fetch water, and children, especially boys, splash and swim for fun.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
More than 100 Carter Center observers will be deployed across Sudan and in eight out-of-country voting locations to witness voting in the referendum for the self-determination of Southern Sudan, as part of one of the Center’s largest observation missions. Most observers are currently being briefed in Juba, Sudan. Learn more »
The people of South Sudan will vote beginning Jan. 9 to decide whether they wish to remain unified with the North or to form a separate country. Hear more about the significance of the upcoming referendum, the challenges ahead, and the Carter Center's contribution to the process. Learn more »
38-year-old Zaki Baushe holds a thin metal needle in his left hand as he deftly angles a thread through its eye. As a tailor in Akwanga local government area, Nasarawa State, Nigeria, it is an act that he has repeated thousands of times throughout his life. Yet several years ago, Baushe was in danger of losing this skill entirely.
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Despite challenges posed by insecurity in Southern Sudan, the region continues to see major reductions in cases of Guinea worm disease. From January to September 2010, only 1,549* cases were identified compared to 2,523 cases over the same period in 2009. Learn more »
For veteran journalist Raúl Novillo Alarcón, navigating the streets of La Paz, Bolivia, is easier than keeping pace with the country's political roadmap. "This is a difficult time for journalism in Bolivia," he said.
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One-third of people living in onchocerciasis-endemic communities in Latin America are no longer at risk for the debilitating disease also known as river blindness, thanks to the hard work and long-term commitment of six endemic countries—and with the support of The Carter Center and other partners—officials announced today during the 20th Inter-American Conference on Onchocerciasis (IACO). Learn more »
Impoverished communities in Amhara Region, Ethiopia—the world’s most trachoma-endemic area—are harnessing an innovative and far-reaching approach to treating and preventing this blinding bacterial infection. Approximately every six months, rotating between the eastern and western halves of Amhara, The Carter Center, in partnership with the Ethiopia Ministry of Health and Lions Clubs International Foundation, mobilizes millions of people in one week. Learn more »
By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Outside a polling station in north Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, hundreds of people waited behind closed gates for voting to begin. Women and the elderly sat on chairs they had brought or on the ground. By the time our team of observers arrived at 10 a.m., three hours after polling should have begun, voters were growing anxious in the baking sun. Some had gotten there at 4 or 5 that morning. Learn more »
The Carter Center is the only American nongovernmental organization observing the historic presidential elections in Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire, and among the handful of international observers present, we have been deployed longer and more extensively than anyone else. These elections represent the first openly competitive contests for both nations since the end of French colonial rule a half-century ago. Learn more »
By Dr. Bornemann, director of the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have posed a unique set of psychological challenges to troops due to multiple tours of duty and a significantly greater prevalence of brain injury, among other factors. As a result, members of the military deployed in these wars have the highest rates of post-traumatic stress disorder on record. Learn more »
The late afternoon sun has begun to set as Philippe Nwane, 38, carrying a long plastic tube, walks slowly through a sweet potato field near a remote village in western Cameroon. He approaches a local stream and finds what he has been hunting for all afternoon—a spot where hundreds of buzzing black flies thicken the air.
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In Aloshi village in central Nigeria, four-year-old David Nuhu stands quietly as a health worker measures his height against a brightly colored pole. The health worker will use the measuring stick to carefully calculate what dose of Zithromax® (donated by Pfizer Inc.) will safely treat the little boy’s trachoma infection. Learn more »
Today, during a special ceremony in Atlanta, former U.S. President and Carter Center Founder Jimmy Carter received on behalf of The Carter Center two new pledges—$500,000 toward the Guinea Worm Eradication Program and $500,000 toward the Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA)—from the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), represented by His Excellency Director General Suleiman Jasir Al-Herbish. Learn more »
“The best way to overcome stigma is to learn that the man who sits in the next office suffers from depression or the neighbor you chat with on summer evenings is battling bipolar disorder. You know them; you’re not afraid of them…Together we can eliminate stigma and bring a better life. Learn more »
For Carter Center officer Pewee Flomoku, bringing justice to the citizens of Liberia is personal.
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Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter launched a journalism fellowship program in 1996 to increase accurate reporting of mental health issues as a way to fight stigma and discrimination against people with mental illnesses—some of the most serious, unrecognized, and under-reported health problems in the United States and worldwide. Learn more »
Guinea’s upcoming runoff presidential election between candidates Cellou Dalein Diallo and Alpha Condé is critical to both the country’s stability and that of the West African region. Recognizing the importance of this electoral process, The Carter Center has maintained its presence in Guinea since May 2010, with long-term observers deployed throughout the country and reporting back to the Center. Learn more »
On August 27, American teacher Aijalon Gomes was reunited with his family in Boston after being imprisoned seven months in North Korea. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter had embarked on a humanitarian mission to obtain Gomes’ release after he was arrested last January and subsequently sentenced to eight years of hard labor and fined about $600,000. Learn more »
Jimmy Carter has for years worked behind the scenes to secure the release of political prisoners. But this week he had to do it in person and in the public spotlight, traveling to North Korea to bring an American home.
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After seven months imprisoned in North Korea, American teacher Aijalon Gomes was reunited with his family this afternoon at Boston Logan Airport. The Carter Center delegation's plane landed at 2 p.m. today. President Carter embarked last Tuesday on a humanitarian mission to obtain Gomes release after he was arrested last January and subsequently sentenced. Learn more »
By Jane Bigham, assistant program coordinator for the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program
Many Liberians suffer from trauma, depression, and other mental health issues following more than a decade of civil conflict. With only one psychiatrist in the entire country, and just a handful of nurses with mental health training, treating those who suffer from mental illnesses has been almost impossible. Jane Bigham, assistant program coordinator for the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program, reflects on her journey and what a new Carter Center mental health initiative will mean for the people of Liberia. Learn more »
Quietly recalling the memory of people jumping from stadium walls to save their lives, and others falling like flies from the gunfire of soldiers, Bademba Diallo remembers thinking in the chaos of that afternoon: "you only die once."
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During a stopover at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, President and Mrs. Carter viewed, for the first time, the exhibit “Jimmy Carter: Georgia’s Native Son.” The Carters met with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and airport officials and enlightened a growing crowd with personal memories and behind the scenes insights. Learn more »
A groundbreaking project to identify and foster concensus on common standards for what constitutes a genuinely democratic election is the focus of a recently-published article in Democratization by Carter Center Democracy Program Assistant Director Avery Davis-Roberts and Director David Carroll. Learn more »
For the past two years, Carter Center observers have traveled around the country, assessing progress and reporting their findings as Nepal has undergone major transformation. Within the last five years, the Asian country has gone from monarchy to electing a constituent assembly charged with drafting a constitution.
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Public Radio International's “The World” examines Liberia's struggle with land disputes, as citizens return home after the war to find others living on land they claim as their own, in a story aired Aug. 3. The story also features the Carter Center’s John Hummel, who explains the country’s need for both a modern legal system and tribal justice system. Learn more »
The National Traditional Council of Liberia (NTC) recently honored Carter Center efforts in the country at a farewell ceremony for the Center’s outgoing country representative, John Hummel. Hummel was gowned in traditional clothing as a show of appreciation to him and The Carter Center for “its good will to the Liberian people,” describing him as “a son whom they will always miss.” Learn more »
The next time you are waiting for a flight at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, visit a president, and get to know “Jimmy Carter: Georgia’s Native Son.” This large exhibit flanks both sides of the corridor between Security and Concourse T and is packed with rare photos, art, and artifacts giving viewers a snapshot of President Carter’s life as a peanut farmer, a romantic, a politician, a president, a humanitarian, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Learn more »
A mortuary services soldier came home angry and suicidal, having processed the dead faces and body parts of numerous service members. A well-loved first sergeant killed himself in front of his men. A platoon that had just lost several soldiers refused to go back on patrol, fearful that their rage would lead to more death.
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Polls opened Sunday morning in Conakry to pouring rain, from which voters sought relief under trees and building overhangs. This was followed by a baking and relentless sun that lasted all day, as hundreds of people waited in line to vote across Conakry and Guinea. One voter told a Carter Center observer that she was in line for more than eight and a half hours. Learn more »
By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Through the open second-story window of a mayor’s office outside Conakry, Guinea, came the sounds of hundreds of people passing by, some blowing on whistles and shouting for candidates, others riding in or on cars with horns and speakers blaring. Learn more »
The lives of an estimated 70 percent of the people living in Southern Sudan are intrinsically entwined with their cattle.
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Ghana recently became the first sub-Saharan African nation to eliminate blinding trachoma as a public health problem, thanks to a decade-long effort of Ghana Health Services in partnership with the Carter Center’s Trachoma Control Program. Trachoma has devastating effects on communities already on the brink of survival, but its most severe form — blindness — is now rarely found in Ghana due to the success of the SAFE strategy — Surgery, Antibiotics ®, Facial cleanliness, and Environmental hygiene. Trachoma thrives in a dry and dusty environment like that in Tingoli, northern Ghana, which is pictured here.
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By Peter Blair, a long-term observer for the Carter Center’s election observation mission in Guinea
Peter Blair is a long-term observer (LTO) for the Carter Center’s election observation mission in Guinea. Blair graduated with a degree in politics from the University of Nottingham, interned with the Carter Center’s Conflict Resolution Program, and worked as a media and communications assistant for Oxfam Ireland. Learn more »
The Andean-U.S. Dialogue Forum met in Lima, Peru, on June 1-2 to develop a common agenda to address problematic issues among the represented countries. The forum, which consists of influential citizens from a variety of sectors within each country, is designed to provide crucial support and reinforcement of diplomatic efforts through a civil society process. Learn more »
The Carter Center's new initiative to help Liberia’s indigenous leaders manage local disputes was recently featured by Voice of America. The Center’s efforts follow a 15-county consultation on the rule of law with traditional leaders in 2009, and a request from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Traditional Council for help strengthening the capacity of local leaders. Learn more »
Mekuria Amare, a health officer in the North Gondar Zone of Ethiopia, is currently completing his clinical training at Gondar University to become a medical doctor. Mekuria initially received training as a health officer, providing him the opportunity to provide general health care to a rural population. Learn more »
Abu Hamad, a vast and isolated desert community 500 kilometers from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, is on the verge of disproving a long-held belief among public health professionals that river blindness (onchocerciasis) cannot be eliminated in Africa due to poor health care delivery and the disease's prevalence.
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The Carter Center-led drive to eradicate Guinea worm disease gained significant momentum in 2009, with an all-time low of 3,190* total cases reported -- a 31 percent decrease from 2008.
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By Avery Davis Roberts, assistant director, Carter Center Democracy Program, and Amber Davis, assistant project coordinator, Carter Center Democracy Program
The Carter Center deployed a limited observation mission to observe the use of voting technology to the Philippines’ May 10 election as part of its Democratic Election Standards project, which includes addressing the challenges of observing electronic voting technologies. Learn more »
By Kelly Callahan, assistant director of program support for the Carter Center’s Health Programs
Kelly Callahan, assistant director of program support for the Carter Center’s Health Programs, blogs from a river blindness-endemic village in western Cameroon, where she is assessing Carter Center and national program efforts to combat the devastating parasitic infection. Learn more »
Impact from the Carter Center’s African Regional Conference on the Right of Access to Information, held in Ghana in February, is still being felt around the African continent as stakeholders work to advance the right and foster communication about remaining challenges. Learn more »
In Ghana, where the government is currently debating the passage of a right to information bill, Nana Oye Lithur coordinates the campaign to ensure the proposed law will conform to international standards and enhance transparency and accountability.
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It is early morning in Molujore village of Terekeka County in Southern Sudan, and Viviana Kolong, a 30-year-old mother of three, dresses carefully in a cool, yellow and white cotton dress and orange flip flops, adding a black bracelet and white beaded rosary to complete her outfit. As the wind picks up and the temperature starts its punishing rise, Kolong leaves her mud hut, passing by her home's empty grain stores. As usual, it will be a long day.
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Cheng Li, director of research and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's John L. Thornton China Center, was part of a small Carter Center delegation that traveled to China in March to advance the Center's programming efforts there.
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Over the past three years, The Carter Center, in partnership with the Nigeria Ministry of Health, has introduced an innovative way of simultaneously treating several parasitic diseases in Nigeria. In this approach — known as triple-drug treatment — a health worker gives a community member three different medicines at one time that in combination treat river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, and several kinds of intestinal worms. In the interview that follows, Frank Richards Jr., M.D., who directs the Center's programs for fighting these diseases, discusses the benefits of the triple-drug approach.
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"Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis," by Rosalynn Carter with Susan K. Golant and Kathryn E. Cade, published by Rodale Books.
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More than 140 Ambassadors Circle members and friends are gathered at The Carter Center in Atlanta for the 2010 Annual Executive Briefing and Presidential Reception today. The two-day event, featuring firsthand updates from the Center’s peace and health experts, kicked off with an opening evening reception April 22 followed by Conversations at The Carter Center, “Improving the Lives of Women." Learn more »
With a population of approximately 17 million, the Amhara Region of Ethiopia is one of the most severely affected trachoma-endemic areas in the world. There are currently more than 15 million people at risk of infection and approximately 470,000 people visually impaired as a result of trichiasis, the blinding form of the disease. In addition, the region is susceptible to seasonal malaria epidemics, putting the majority of the population at risk for the potentially fatal disease.
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Teshome Gebre, the Carter Center's country representative for health programs in Ethiopia, likes to joke that he has been in public health service for what seems like 100 years. Yet, it's impossible to ignore the great joy Teshome has received from a lifetime dedicated to fighting disease in his native Ethiopia.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
In Sudan, people across the country began voting on Sunday. Here are images from the first two days of balloting. This is the 78th election observed by The Carter Center. Learn more »
Impoverished communities in Amhara Region, Ethiopia—the world's most trachoma-endemic area—are harnessing an innovative and far-reaching approach to treating and preventing this blinding bacterial infection.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director, Communications Department
Sudan’s historic elections, the country’s first in 24 years, begin on Sunday and will include nearly one week of voting and counting the ballots. The Carter Center deployed approximately 70 observers to Sudan’s 25 states. Campaigning officially ended today, and in Khartoum, election materials were packed up. Learn more »
Carter Center long-term observers in Sudan, who have been deployed since August 2009, will soon be joined by a full delegation to observe the country's April elections. In teams of two, long-term observers have assessed pre-election developments, including voter registration in December.
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The Carter Center announced today that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former Algerian Foreign Minister and member of the Elders Lakhdar Brahimi, Judge Joseph Warioba, and Carter Center President and CEO Dr. John Hardman will lead the Center’s international election observation delegation to observe Sudan’s elections, which are scheduled to begin on April 11. Learn more »
Recent political events in Cote d’Ivoire introduced a serious disruption, hopefully temporary, of election preparations and demonstrated how easily the West African country could slide back into conflict. Elections there have been delayed several times; The Carter Center has been the only international election observation group present during the entire process and has deployed teams of observers for different phases. Learn more »
The Carter Center is hosting its 2009 health program reviews March 23-31, 2010, with experts from around the world –including representatives from partner organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lions Clubs International, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – gathered in Atlanta to assess program status and adopt recommendations for the coming year. Learn more »
The Carter Center, long at the forefront of the election observation field, is working with students at Georgia Tech University to take the field forward again – using smartphone technology to streamline the observation process and compile the findings of observers in a fast, efficient, and transparent way.
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Merekaje Lorna can't wait to vote. A domestic election observer trained by The Carter Center in Sudan, she believes she and other young Sudanese have a responsibility to contribute to credible elections for the sake of the next generation, and as her country approaches its first multi-party elections in 24 years, she looks forward to being able to choose her leaders.
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Brother and sister Juan Tavares Rodriguez and Casilda Trejada Abreu live with their family in a pine board home in La Bomba, Dominican Republic.
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A small Carter Center delegation is in China this week to advance the Center’s programming efforts there. The Center has worked to help standardize the vast array of electoral procedures taking place in local communities and foster better governance for more than a decade, at the invitation of the Chinese government. Learn more »
A series of experts, including Carter Center Americas Program Director Jennifer McCoy and former Latin American leaders, will convene on March 15 at Georgia State University (GSU) to analyze recent democratic crises in the region, including the Honduran coup and recent events in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Learn more »
<p>In his new book, “Wars, Guns, and Votes,” Oxford economist Paul Collier argues that the international community – presumably including The Carter Center – focuses too much on holding elections and ignores the underlying problems of insecurity and lack of checks and balances essential for democratic development. Collier will discuss his concerns during a Carter Center Conversation on Wednesday from …</p> Learn more »
Mekuria Amare, a health officer in the North Gondar Zone of Ethiopia, is currently completing his clinical training at Gondar University to become a medical doctor. Mekuria initially received training as a health officer, providing him the opportunity to provide general health care to a rural population. In 2007, he was trained by The Carter Center to provide trichiasis surgery at his health post in the remote district of Telemt.
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The Carter Center's annual Winter Weekend auction, held Feb. 27 at Port St. Lucie, Fla., raised $1,322,300 — the second-highest amount raised in the event's history — to benefit the not-for-profit Center’s initiatives to advance peace and health worldwide. The highest bid items at the fundraiser were two original paintings by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, which sold for $290,000. Learn more »
The last case of Guinea worm disease in Nigeria was suffered by Grace Otubu, 58, of Ezza Nkwubor village in Enugu state, whose worm emerged in November 2008. Twelve months later, Nigeria triumphed over the ancient, crippling affliction, also known as dracunculiasis, that had affected hundreds of thousands of Nigerians at its peak. The success of Africa's most populous nation against this debilitating waterborne parasite would not have been possible without the hard work of the endemic communities, the relentless vigilance of the national program, and the dedication of Gen. Dr. Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria's former head of state.
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For the past two days at The Carter Center, influential nongovernmental participants from the United States and the five Andean countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia have gathered for a dialogue aimed to strengthen the historically difficult U.S.-Andean relations and cooperation. Learn more »
Working with monitors from the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission (JPC), The Carter Center supports legal advice services in marginalized rural communities through a network of 32 Community Legal Advisors (CLAs) in eight counties. Learn more »
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter met with Sudanese officials to urge peace and stability in the nation as it prepares for its first multi-party elections in 24 years in April, which the Carter Center's international election observation team will monitor. Learn more »
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Central Equatoria State Governor Clement Wani Konga, and Commissioner Clement Maring Samuel today urged intensification of efforts to wipe out Guinea worm disease, a waterborne parasitic infection, in the remote village of Molujore, Terekeka County, Southern Sudan. The village visit was followed by a press conference at the Assembly Hall in Juba, with representatives from Sudan's Ministry. Learn more »
On the twentieth anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from a South African prison, Carter Center Vice President for Peace Programs John Stremlau writes for CNN.com that “Mandela must continue to embody the roles for South Africans that Washington, Lincoln, and King serve in protecting and advancing democracy in America. Learn more »
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are in Sudan—the world’s most Guinea worm-endemic country—to personally appeal for completing eradication of the crippling waterborne parasite as soon as possible and to urge peace and stability in the nation as it prepares for its first multi-party elections in 24 years in April, which the Carter Center’s international election observation team will monitor. Learn more »
The African Regional Conference on the Right of Access to Information began Sunday in Accra, Ghana. More than 130 participants arrived from 20 African countries as well as Mexico, Canada, India, Australia, and the United States. Learn more »
The Carter Center has deep roots in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and one plagued by poisonous politics. Jimmy Carter’s 1978 visit was the first time a U.S. president visited an African state. The Carter Center has worked there since 1988 to eradicate or control neglected diseases like Guinea worm and river blindness. Learn more »
Olawale Fapohunda believes that the proposed African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) will enable African citizens to more fully participate in the electoral process and advance protection of human rights by African governments. And, in places like his home country of Nigeria, he feels the need for its ratification is vital. Learn more »
Three years ago, Yalanbu Zenabu of Botingli, northern Ghana, was consumed by the daily suffering of trachoma. As a victim of trichiasis, the blinding form of trachoma, her disease had progressed to the stage where her eyelashes scratched against her eye, causing intense pain and debilitation.
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Listen to Laura Neuman, associate director for the Americas Program at The Carter Center and the access to information project manager, discuss the upcoming conference. Learn more »
A crowd of children follow Jonel Mompremier, 27, as he travels from house to house in Ouanaminthe, Haiti. They giggle as the health worker asks the same question at every doorstep, "Does anyone at home have any fevers?"
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It's a Sunday afternoon in La Bomba barrio, a subdistrict of Dajabón, Dominican Republic, and the entire community can be found outside their clapboard and cement block homes to beat the stifling heat.
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In September 2008, The Carter Center and a binational effort between the Dominican Republic and Haiti launched a historic one-year initiative to help the countries and their other partners accelerate the elimination of two devastating mosquito-borne infections—malaria and lymphatic filariasis.
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If passion is a key ingredient for success, then Dr. Mauricio Sauerbrey embodies the necessary "stuff" for meeting the goal of interrupted transmission of river blindness — or onchocerciasis—in the Americas by 2012.
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China Elections and Governance Online, a project of the Carter Center's China Program, has received top honors from two major Chinese publications. Learn more »
In Ezza Nkwubor village in southeastern Nigeria, 58-year-old Grace Otubo sits on a wooden bench and touches her right heel, recalling where a Guinea worm painfully emerged in November 2008. She didn't know it at the time, but her Guinea worm would be the last one from Nigeria.
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For Alba Lucia Morales Castro, health education adviser with the Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas (OEPA)--the Carter Center-sponsored river blindness elimination organization in Latin America--the joy of working in the field is its own reward.
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As the only foreign organization monitoring Bolivia's voter registration process, Carter Center long-term observers are witnessing a historic convergence of technology with indigenous cultures in one of South America's most diverse countries.
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For Jordan Bracho, editor-in-chief at Telesur TV in Venezuela, attending The Carter Center "Journalism Beyond Print" workshop in August 2009 led to an immediate improvement in his work and allowed him to develop relationships with colleagues that he wouldn't have otherwise been able to in Venezuela's current media environment.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Carter Center Bolivia Field Office Director Nicolás Fernández Bravo talks about the Center’s findings on election day and the challenges ahead for Bolivia. Learn more »
Carter Center Bolivia Field Office Director Nicolás Fernández Bravo talks about the Center's findings on election day and the challenges ahead for Bolivia
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Marcelo Varela, associate director of the Carter Center’s Americas Program, talks about election day in Bolivia. Learn more »
Marcelo Varela, associate director of the Carter Center's Americas Program, talks about election day in Bolivia.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Listen to Carter Center observers Daniel Barnes and Angela Lederach talk about the reception they have received so far as election observers in Bolivia. Learn more »
Listen to Carter Center observers Daniel Barnes and Angela Lederach talk about the reception they have received so far as election observers in Bolivia.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Watch Barnes and Lederach as they talk about the day's activities and their preparation for election day. Carter Center observers Daniel Barnes and Angela Lederach deployed this morning to Cochabamba, a city that has …</p> Learn more »
Carter Center observers Daniel Barnes and Angela Lederach deployed this morning to Cochabamba, a city that has grown immensely in recent years as people have immigrated from rural areas to find employment.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
In La Paz, Bolivia, colorful election graffiti and signs may be found on most available spaces along the winding road that leads upward to the city of El Alto. President Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, enjoys overwhelming popularity in La Paz. He is running for a second term in office, courtesy of an article in the country’s new constitution approved by referendum in January that allows him to seek re-election. Learn more »
By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Today, on the last official day of campaigning before Sunday’s elections, rallies were held throughout Bolivia. Drummers and dancers (video), joining thousands of supporters (photos, below), show their enthusiastic support during a large rally in El Alto for Evo Morales. Learn more »
Marcelo Varela, associate director of the Carter Center's Americas Program, talks about the unique role of the Center's mission to observe Bolivia's elections on Sunday, Dec. 6.
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Today, on the last official day of campaigning before Sunday's elections, rallies were held throughout Bolivia.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Watch a brief video of Carter Center long-term observers talking about their work in Bolivia and the country’s new biometric voter registration process. Learn more »
Carter Center observers are gathering in La Paz, Bolivia, to be briefed ahead of their deployment to observe Sunday's presidential and legislative elections. Election results will determine who will implement and enforce the new constitution, approved by referendum in January 2009 Learn more »
Join the Carter Center's Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information, on the ground in Bolivia, as she blogs daily through Dec. 7 about the presidential and legislative elections, their importance for the Latin American country, and the Carter Center's role in the process. Learn more »
South American neighbors Ecuador and Colombia have a contentious recent history because of strains along their shared border, but seeing the other's point of view has become easier for key citizens participating in the Carter Center's dialogue process between both countries. Learn more »
Efforts to eliminate malaria and lymphatic filariasis from the Caribbean island of Hispaniola were underscored Oct. 7-8 during a visit by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and a Carter Center delegation.
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As the only foreign organization monitoring Bolivia's voter registration process, Carter Center long-term observers are witnessing a historic convergence of technology with indigenous cultures in one of South America's most diverse countries.
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After seven years online, the Carter Center sponsored-website www.chinaelections.org is one of the most visible platforms in China for the dissemination of democratic awareness and civic culture. Learn more »
Microscopist Marino Castillo pricks the finger of five-year-old girl Silvana Mayor and draws blood onto a glass slide. The girl's shirt is bright yellow, but her face is weary. Her mother says the girl has had a fever for several days, and the mother is worried that she has malaria.
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For 30 years, Henrietta Gayflor* endured ongoing physical abuse from her partner. After he assaulted her in her front yard one day, Gayflor decided to take action.
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Five-year-old Lotepi Lokusi's mother was worried. Although she knew it was common for a Guinea worm to emerge from a foot or an ankle, she had never seen one migrate to the face. Clearly visible just under his skin--from one jaw line to the other — a Guinea worm was winding its way higher each day, toward her little boy's scalp.
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A family of four waits outside Rita Jimenez Huancollo's wood-paneled office at the Integrated Justice Center (CIJ) in La Paz, Bolivia, husband and wife with eyes cast down, he folding and unfolding papers and she glancing sideways every so often to quietly encourage their children to sit patiently.
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In Bolivia, political disputes often escalate to the brink of conflict. One of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, Bolivia's ethnic and cultural diversity, as well as struggles over natural resources, fuel strong social and economic tensions.
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KINSHASA....The initial vision for the Carter Center's Human Rights House was to provide both a space and forum for human rights activists in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, building on the momentum of the 2006 elections.
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The initial vision for the Carter Center's Human Rights House was to provide both a space and forum for human rights activists in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, building on the momentum of the 2006 elections. Learn more »
When she began work as a job counselor almost 10 years ago in Atlanta with refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Valerie Harden never imagined she would one day play a role in the restoration of their war-torn country.
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Dr. Jennifer McCoy, Director, Americas Program, takes your questions. Learn more »
From the roof of his family's home in East Jerusalem within the walls of the Old City, Raed Sa'id points to the golden Dome of The Rock, which is glowing in the late-afternoon sun.
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Lama Naja represents hope for Lebanon's political future. A politically independent young person in a country full of strong political passions and fierce party loyalties, she instead voted on June 7 for the people she thought may keep their campaign promises.
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It is nearly evening in the desert village of Adorihi in southern Niger, and 36-year-old Aisha Oumarou crouches over her cooking fire carefully mixing oil into a pot on coals. Although the mixture smells faintly of peanuts, the hot dough that Oumarou extracts from the pot and rolls between her hands is not destined to be the evening's meal, but balls of soap.
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With a population of approximately 17 million, the Amhara Region of Ethiopia is one of the most severely affected trachoma-endemic areas in the world. There are currently more than 15 million people at risk of infection and approximately 470,000 people visually impaired as a result of trichiasis, the blinding form of the disease. In addition, the region is susceptible to seasonal malaria epidemics, putting the majority of the population at risk for the potentially fatal disease.
Learn more »
By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
A multinational Carter Center delegation observed Lebanon’s June 7 parliamentary elections, monitoring polling sites throughout the country’s 25 qadas (districts). Led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former Yemini Prime Minister Abdulkareem Al-Eryani, the 60 member delegation included elected officials, electoral and human rights experts, regional specialists, and political and civic leaders from more than 20 countries in North America, Africa, Europe, South America, Asia, and the Middle East. Learn more »
Election Day in Lebanon: Carter Center Observers Monitor Polling Sites
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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter visits Syria, Israel, West Bank, and Gaza. Learn more »
By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Deborah Hakes is assistant director of public information for The Carter Center. For the past week and a half (and for weeks before I arrived), the Carter Center office for the elections was a scene of constant intense activity at all hours of a day. Learn more »
For the past week and a half (and for weeks before I arrived), the Carter Center office for the elections was a scene of constant intense activity at all hours of a day. Now the field staff has returned to their regular office outside the hotel, and Atlanta-based staff are flying home or to another field project.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
I’ve been sharing my experiences with you from Lebanon for the past week and thought it was also important to share a few of the many other voices whose hard work made the election observation mission possible. Learn more »
Lebanon held successful parliamentary elections on June 7, 2009, the results of which were accepted peacefully by both sides. The Carter Center deployed 60 observers from 23 countries to assess voting, counting, and tabulation processes, led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former Prime Minister of Yemen Abdul-Kareem al–Eryani.
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2009 Lebanon Parliamentary Elections - Deborah Hakes Blogs From Carter Center Election Observation Mission
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Things are wrapping up here for this phase of the Carter Center’s election observation mission to Lebanon. Our long-term observers will remain deployed to monitor the post-election processes. Learn more »
2009 Lebanon Parliamentary Elections - Deborah Hakes Blogs
From Carter Center Election Observation Mission
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
The long lines surprised all of us. They wound down stairs and through the hallways of elementary schools, municipal buildings, and other polling sites where we visited. It made walking from polling station to polling station a very crowded affair. The voters seemed in good spirits though, often cheering and yelling “Jimmy Carter!’ when they realized just which international observers were there. Learn more »
Lebanon Parliamentary Elections 2009- Deborah Hakes Blogs From Carter Center Election Observation Mission
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
It is the eve of Lebanon’s parliamentary elections and things seem quiet. Our observers were deployed yesterday, and they continue regular check-in calls to let us know that they are safe. Meanwhile, the core staff in Beirut are finalizing preparations for tomorrow – election day Learn more »
It is the eve of Lebanon's parliamentary elections and things seem quiet. Our observers were deployed yesterday, and they continue regular check-in calls to let us know that they are safe.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Today, I headed south to Lebanon’s border with Hrair Balian, the director of the Conflict Resolution Program at The Carter Center, to be briefed by the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and to see what the pre-election environment was like there. Learn more »
Today, I headed south to Lebanon's border with Hrair Balian, the director of the Conflict Resolution Program at The Carter Center, to be briefed by the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), and to see what the pre-election environment was like there.
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
Across Lebanon today, more than 11,000 polling station workers could cast their ballots early for the parliamentary elections. I traveled to Baabda, a town in the mountains southeast of Beirut, to watch the process. Baabda has six seats being contested in these elections, and per Lebanon’s complicated distribution of parliamentary seats by religion, three will be filled by Maronite Christians, two by Shia Muslims, and one by a Druze. Learn more »
2009 Lebanon Parliamentary Elections - Deborah Hakes Blogs From Carter Center Election Observation Mission
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By Deborah Hakes, assistant director of public information for The Carter Center
I’ve only been in Beirut, Lebanon, for 24 hours, but I can already tell that the parliamentary elections to be held this coming Sunday are going to be a fascinating process, and I am thrilled to be a part of it. The world is watching what happens here, and I will get to see it firsthand. I’ll do my best to share what I see with you. Learn more »
Join the Carter Center's Deborah Hakes, in Lebanon with the multinational Carter Center delegation, as she blogs daily about the sights and sounds "on the ground" and the importance of these elections for the country and region.
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I've only been in Beirut, Lebanon, for 24 hours, but I can already tell that the parliamentary elections to be held this coming Sunday are going to be a fascinating process, and I am thrilled to be a part of it. The world is watching what happens here, and I will get to see it firsthand. I'll do my best to share what I see with you.
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It is dusk in northern Ghana and communities reverberate with the local mosque's call to prayer. The setting sun has fallen beyond the concrete buildings that flank the market square, casting everyone in deep purple shadow. Thousands of people are making their way to this rural outpost, the current epicenter of the country's decades-long battle to eradicate Guinea worm disease.
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A multinational Carter Center delegation will observe Lebanon's June 7 parliamentary elections, monitoring polling sites throughout the country's 25 qadas (districts). Learn more »
New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof recently traveled to Liberia to explore progress against sexual and gender violence there and the impact of the Carter Center's rule of law project.
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With accreditation from Lebanon's Ministry of the Interior and Municipalities, The Carter Center dispatched six long-term observers to Lebanon in March to monitor the electoral process leading to parliamentary elections on June 7, 2009.
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Marwa Alkhairo is a long-term observer in the Carter Center's election observation mission in Lebanon. This is her first election mission. She graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service with a master's degree in Arab studies in 2008 and certificate in refugee and humanitarian studies. She has had expansive experience in international NGOs, research institutes, film, and advocacy work as related to issues in the Arab world.
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Although about one half of all the countries in the Americas now have some form of access to information legislation, and almost all of the remaining countries are considering establishing a statutory right to information, there remain a number of critical challenges. In many countries, implementation and enforcement of the law has been weak. In other places there are signs of backsliding where once vibrant laws are now politicized or ineffectual; and in all cases there is a need to broaden and deepen the usage of the right to information.
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For Craig Withers, the Carter Center's director of program support, the bumblebee is the perfect symbol of success.
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Dr. Jennifer McCoy, director of the Carter Center's Americas Program, is traveling with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter as a member of the Carter Center delegation to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil from April 27 to May 4, 2009. Read more about the trip and read her blog entries below.
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Long-term election observers Whitney Haring-Smith and Eunsook Jung have been deployed in Aceh since March 2009 as part of the Carter Center's mission to observe Indonesia's April 9, 2009 parliamentary elections.
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Ethiopia daily faces a devastating health emergency - one in six children will not see their fifth birthday, and the life expectancy is 41 years. The most common illnesses and causes of death could be easily prevented or treated if it were not for the acute lack of access to health care in the country. Learn more »
Until recently, police officers in Kimbasneke, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), investigated case files at a music bar or other public space because they didn't have office space. When it rained, they carried the papers under their shirts to preserve the files.
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Lawrence, whose pieces favor vivid colors and often depict natural subjects like flowers and landscapes, says the tulips were inspired by a springtime visit to the Center's grounds. He believes tulips, in their many shapes and hues, represent people from around the world and the beauty that can occur when we all work together. Learn more »
As the sun rose on Ghana's second election day in two weeks, Alice Appoh had already stood in line for hours to wait for voting to begin, her two-year-old child sound asleep on her back.
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More than 50 Carter Center observers witnessed Ghana's Dec. 7 elections, the results of which will determine the country's next president and parliament.
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Fifty–seven Carter Center observers witnessed Ghana's Dec. 7, 2008, presidential and parliamentary elections. Overall, the Center’s observers visited more than 300 polling stations on election day, witnessing the opening, voting, and closing of voting across the country.
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A Chinese delegation hosted by The Carter Center is studying today's U.S. election in the San Francisco and Washington, D.C., areas to learn more about election procedures and reduce misperceptions by the Chinese of the American democratic system.
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In a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, journalist Jimmie Briggs listens via translator to a young woman describe being raped by soldiers. Briggs, an unlikely confidant as both a man and an American, is so devastated by her account he cannot continue taking notes. He begins to weep and offers to end the interview. The woman, "Madeline," refuses.
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Hrair Balian, director, Conflict Resolution Program, joined The Carter Center in 2008. Balian oversees the program’s efforts to monitor conflicts around the world and coordinates the Center’s cross-program efforts in the Middle East. He is also an adjunct professor at the Emory University Law School, teaching an advanced international negotiations seminar. Learn more »
The Carter Center Conflict Resolution Program works to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts by monitoring early warnings in fragile states and through timely, targeted, and impartial interventions. When possible and appropriate, rapid-response interventions--negotiations, mediations, or facilitation--are accomplished through the personal involvement of President and Mrs. Carter, with the support of program staff. In other instances, senior staff conduct interventions with support from senior diplomats around the world. We also engage in sustained post-conflict peacebuilding to promote reconciliation and the restoration of the rule of law. Additionally, the program targets challenging contemporary issues of international peace and security not addressed by other institutions. Learn more »
In light of the recent passage of the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, Mrs. Carter sat down to discuss what has changed since she began her advocacy work and what still can be done for people living with mental illnesses. Learn more »
Conventional wisdom says trachoma — the leading cause of preventable blindness worldwide — can only be treated, not eliminated. But Teshome Gebre, The Carter Center's point man for trachoma control in Ethiopia, hopes to defy that wisdom. He is convinced that trachoma's blinding and debilitating effects can be stopped before the end of the next decade, the targeted goal for global trachoma elimination.
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River blindness is such a pervasive disease in Africa that many global experts believe it can only be controlled not eliminated. But Uganda has announced plans to rid the disease, despite hefty challenges. The country's Ministry of Health officials believe that eliminating the disease will be more cost-effective than continuing control efforts indefinitely for its estimated 2 million citizens at risk.
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Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter led a mission to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan April 13-21, 2008, as part of the Carter Center's ongoing effort to support peace, democracy, and human rights in the region. Accompanying him were former First Lady Rosalynn Carter; son Jeffrey Carter; former U.S. Congressman Stephen Solarz; Dr. Robert Pastor, senior Carter Center advisor; and Hrair Balian, director of the Center's Conflict Resolution Program.
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With help from the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism, journalists on four continents are working to reduce stigma and raise awareness about mental health and mental illnesses in their communities. Learn more »
Involved with Liberia since 1991, when invited by West Aftican leaders during the country's first civil war to assist in the peace process, The Carter Center works to strengthen the rule of law.
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The Carter Center and the African Union (AU) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on July 29, 2008, at the AU Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The MOU will enable the Center to work closely with the AU in areas such as election monitoring, human rights, and strengthening democracies. Carter Center Vice-President for Peace Programs John Stremlau signed on behalf of The Carter Center while Department of Political Affairs Commissioner Julie Joiner signed on behalf of AU Commission Chairperson H.E. Jean Ping.
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The Carter Center works toward the collective protection and promotion of meaningful democracy in the Western Hemisphere. The Center strives to enhance the quality of democracy and its ability to improve the lives of individuals in three areas: Learn more »
In 2007, Sadia Mesuna—a young girl from Savelugu town in Northern Ghana—spent two agonizing months in a Carter Center Guinea worm containment center with 20 other children suffering from the disease. Today, Sadia, 7, is Guinea worm-free and has returned to school. This is her story of triumph and a new life without fear.
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In 2007, Sadia Mesuna—a young girl from Savelugu town in Northern Ghana—spent two agonizing months in a Carter Center Guinea worm containment center with 20 other children suffering from the disease. Today, Sadia, 7, is Guinea worm-free and has returned to school. This is her story of triumph and a new life without fear.
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The countdown to complete elimination of Guinea worm disease is ticking closer to zero. Ethiopia, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Togo now have joined the list of countries reporting an end to transmission of the disease. The Carter Center leads the international coalition fighting the disease.
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Roger Bryant is a long-term observer in the Carter Center's election observation mission in Lebanon. After a career in the British Navy, Roger worked with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina for a number of years before becoming involved in election work abroad as administrator and then as a long-term observer. Roger was a member of the Carter Center's observation mission to Nepal in 2007-8.
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The characteristics of childhood friendship are similar all over the world. In the community of Nasarawa North in Nigeria in 2006, friends 13-year-old Aminu Farouk, 12-year-old Dauda Usman, and 11-year-old Salihu Abdullahi walk to school together, dive in the local reservoir on hot afternoons, and help each other with difficult homework assignments. They also share a deep secret. Each suffers from urinary schistosomiasis, a silent and destructive parasitic infection that leads to poor growth and impaired cognitive function in children.
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Pitasia Gonzáles lives in rural Mexico with her daughters, in a home surrounded by coffee fields accessible only by foot. Like many of the women in her community, Gonzáles was a strong and capable provider for her family, until river blindness (also known as onchocerciasis) stole her sight many years ago.
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Gazans gather, above, to watch the April 21 Jerusalem press conference of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Click here, or on images above, to view video footage of the press conference and the Palestinian observers in Gaza.
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A little more than a year ago, 10-year-old Hubeida Iddirisu faced long days of pain as three Guinea worms began to emerge from blisters on her body. Every day for two weeks, a volunteer came to her home in Savelugu town, Ghana, to extract the worms slowly by rolling them on pieces of gauze, a little each day. As is the case with most Guinea worm disease victims, Iddirisu was unable to handle her household tasks while the worms were emerging. Her family relies on her income from selling charcoal.
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Growing up in England, Dr. Paul Emerson dreamed of becoming a scientist and an educator, the kind of individual who would have both the technical knowledge and practical skills to show people how to better their lives. That dream led him first to teach in England and Africa, then to become a medical entomologist, and now to The Carter Center, which he joined three years ago as director of the Trachoma Control Program. "My specialty is the humble house fly and the diseases it transmits," he said. One of the worst of these is trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eyes.
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Websites sponsored by The Carter Center have become an important portal for political reform in China, engaging their audiences with news articles translated into both Chinese and English and offering a platform to debate current affairs in a traditionally closed society.
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The Carter Center’s international election observation delegation to Nepal’s April 10, 2008, elections, led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, and Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai, former deputy prime minister of Thailand, included 62 observers from more than 20 nations.
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Carter Center election observers witnessed a historic vote in Nepal on April 10 creating a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution for the country that will likely abolish the 240-year-old monarchy.
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The Carter Center and the African Union (AU) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on July 29, 2008, at the AU Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The MOU will enable the Center to work closely with the AU in areas such as election monitoring, human rights, and strengthening democracies. Learn more »
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter led the Carter Center's international election observation delegation to Nepal's historic constituent assembly elections, co-led by Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai, former deputy prime minister of Thailand.
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The constituent assembly election is a central feature of Nepal’s ongoing peace process and was agreed to by all parties in the Nov. 21, 2006, Comprehensive Peace Accord. The elections will create a representative body charged with drafting a new constitution for Nepal and give the people of Nepal their first opportunity to speak out and express their views on the future direction of the country. Learn more »
The constituent assembly election is a central feature of Nepal's ongoing peace process and was agreed to by all parties in the Nov. 21, 2006, Comprehensive Peace Accord. The elections will create a representative body charged with drafting a new constitution for Nepal and give the people of Nepal their first opportunity to speak out and express their views on the future direction of the country. Learn more »
The Carter Center conducted a conflict–related development analysis in two towns along the Ecuador northern border. The analysis focuses on development in the border zone, including access to justice and human rights, citizen security, and youth and social inclusion, and will serve as input for the creation of public policies for development in the northern border zone by Ecuador’s government.
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Buenaventura Morales has a kind face worn weary from life, and friendly eyes that hide the depression plaguing him since he fled his native Colombia after massacres to his village in 2004. His wife died along the way, and he said he feels unable to support his four children by himself; he can't find a job in this poor border region of Ecuador. He plans to rent a small plot of land nearby to grow rice and trade it among the large refugee community here. Life on the border between Ecuador and Colombia is tough, and complicated.
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What struck me most about the country is not how the people have changed: it is how the government has changed because of people. The government seems to be more keenly aware of the people’s needs, of the growing gap between the rich and the poor, of the international pressure on China to change its policies on issues such as environmental pollution, global warming, energy saving, and of its own source of legitimacy. Learn more »
What struck me most about the country is not how the people have changed: it is how the government has changed because of people. The government seems to be more keenly aware of the people's needs, of the growing gap between the rich and the poor, of the international pressure on China to change its policies on issues such as environmental pollution, global warming, energy saving, and of its own source of legitimacy. Learn more »
After launching its malaria program in 2006, The Carter Center moved quickly to supply a shortfall of 3 million LLINs, requested by the Ethiopian Ministry of Health to help reach Ethiopia's goal of 20 million LLINs to cover all households in malarious areas by mid-2007. Learn more »
In this Q&A, the Carter Center's Laura Neuman, assistant director of the Americas Program and Access to Information Project manager, shares her insights. Learn more »
Access to public information matters to the average citizen: it is a human right with the power to make a difference in both individual lives and in the life of a community. Although great advances have been made worldwide over the last decade, countries still face important challenges in the implementation and enforcement of access to information laws. Learn more »
Access to information is a fundamental right. Allowing people to seek and receive public documents serves as a critical tool for fighting corruption, enabling citizens to more fully participate in public life, making governments more efficient, encouraging investment, and helping persons exercise their fundamental human rights. For this reason, The Carter Center is actively involved with governments and civil society. Learn more »
At the invitation of the Government of Liberia, the Carter Center's "Strengthening the Rule of Law and Combating Impunity" project, begun in October 2006, is filling critical gaps in the delivery of justice in rural Liberia.
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"Frankly, I would like to see Liberia at the apex of the continent, on top. I believe very strongly and very sincerely that in spite of what we've been through-the devastation and degradation and all of the other negatives that we can think of-we still have the propensity to rise highly and rigorously." Learn more »
Tiawan S. Gongloe, solicitor general of Liberia, knows his country's justice system from both sides of a jail cell. As a student activist in the late 1970's, he was imprisoned and beaten for speaking out against the government of then-president William Tolbert, and later for speaking out against President Charles Taylor.
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Mama Tumeh, leader of the country-wide Traditional Women for Peace – a Carter Center partner — is regarded as the spiritual leader of women throughout Liberia. Her work is bringing a message of hope and empowerment to women who are survivors of the country's 14-year civil war.
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The Modia Drama Club, based in Gbarnga, Liberia, is a Carter Center partner in the rule of law public education and awareness campaign. Members travel to Liberia's most remote villages by foot, motorcycle, and four-wheel drive, to educate entire communities – often gathered in open-air settings – through skits, music, and interactive dialogue on Liberia's new laws.
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Fifteen years ago, Dr. Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben, then in his early 50s, was contemplating retirement. He had served 27 years as a commissioned officer of the U.S. Public Health Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and was thinking about starting a new career and traveling.
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Today, a visitor to the Mbale district of eastern Uganda might see Mustafa Mugwano happily plowing his fields in the lush farming village of Bunawazi. But two years ago, he would have been found living alone in the forests bordering the village. Mugwano survived there for more than 10 years after having been turned away by his community.
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As a child growing up in the small village of Dakore in Burkina Faso, Dr. Dieudonné Sankara saw firsthand the debilitating affects of Guinea worm disease.
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Although the country's decades of violence are over, Liberia's women continue to face their own private wars: marital rape, domestic abuse, poverty. The Carter Center, at the invitation of Liberia's Ministry of Justice and in partnership with community-based organizations in the West African country, is helping close the violence gap through local education programs and governmental capacity building.
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In this interview, Dr. Thom Bornemann, director of the Carter Center Mental Health Program, discusses the importance of early screening and intervention, and the current challenges to mental health prevention efforts. Learn more »
Swathed in a loose-fitting tunic conservatively hiding his deformed right leg, 38-year-old Hamisu Isa pulls up a white plastic chair to join a group of his fellow Nigerians under two mango trees in the city of Jos.
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The Carter Center, since 2003, has warned of the dangers that autocratic leaders would take advantage of the “war on terror” to suppress legitimate political opposition and basic human rights. What General Musharraf has done is to try to wipe away the results of decades of effort by human rights and judicial leaders to restrain the powers of executive authority in Pakistan, which for half of the country’s history has been in the hands of the military. Learn more »
The Carter Center, since 2003, has warned of the dangers that autocratic leaders would take advantage of the "war on terror" to suppress legitimate political opposition and basic human rights. What General Musharraf has done is to try to wipe away the results of decades of effort by human rights and judicial leaders to restrain the powers of executive authority in Pakistan, which for half of the country's history has been in the hands of the military. An independent judicial system has been built with hard-won gains of dedicated jurists and those who have risked their lives to bring human rights into the court room. Learn more »
In 2007, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote "Beyond the White House," about his post-presidency work with The Carter Center. In it, he reflected on a number of election observation missions, including the Center's first to Guyana, in 1992. An excerpt from the book, published by Simon and Schuster, is reprinted here.
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Nepal has undergone tremendous changes in the past year. A 2006 peace agreement ended a decade of fighting between government forces and the Maoists, and the country's king gave up all power other than his ceremonial status.
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The Carter Center observed Nepal’s constituent assembly elections, which were delayed from the scheduled Nov. 22, 2007, date. The Center’s long-term observers (LTOs) have been deployed throughout the country since March 2007. Currently the only international observation mission in Nepal, the Center’s well–established reputation for professional and impartial observation enables it to gather a wide range of information from diverse actors.
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Jason Katz is a long-term observer (LTO) for the Carter Center's election observation mission in Nepal. Katz previously worked at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Washington, D.C., and served as an election monitor during both rounds of elections in Peru in 2001.
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It was a recurring headline in South African newspapers: "Cop Murder-Suicide Claims Family." Dozens of sons, fathers, and husbands working in the South African Police Service had committed these crimes against their own families, but the stories of what motivated them were rarely told.
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Time and money to access voluminous public records are luxuries most reporters do not have to investigate negligence or malfeasance in the public sector. Learn more »
Stefanie Gross was a long-term observer (LTO) for the Carter Center's election observation mission in Nepal from March-December 2007, and wrote her reflections during this time. Originally from Germany, Stefanie completed her undergraduate degree in political studies and her postgraduate degree in conflict resolution in the United Kingdom before interning at The Carter Center in 2006.
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Alex Ulmanu sometimes wonders if things could have been different. "I had a colleague in university who was a brilliant, brilliant person and who committed suicide in her very early 20s. We learned afterward that she was suffering from schizophrenia," Ulmanu said.
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Mental illnesses affect people of all ages in all countries and societies, from the boy soldier in Sierra Leone traumatized by years of bloody civil war to the aging farmer in Oklahoma suffering from depression. These illnesses have a profound impact on the quality of life for individuals and families and stunt economic growth in societies around the world.
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After Iraq's 2006 elections, the United States and other Western governments celebrated that country's move toward democracy. But as Karin Ryan knows from her 20 years with The Carter Center, an election is only a small step on the long road toward a true democratic government.
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The purpose of the drama is to inform community members about the law and their rights. After enduring 14 years of civil war, most Liberians, especially in remote areas, have little knowledge of the formal justice system, new laws, and ways to seek justice.
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The rolling, lush landscape of the Ethiopian countryside surrounded the straw and mortar shelter. Inside, Ababora Abajobar, 70, sat in the thick-walled darkness. His weathered hands perched upon his walking stick, his blue socks neatly folded around his scarred shins.
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ATLANTA....Beverly Benson Long, a mental health pioneer whose efforts were instrumental in establishing the Rosalynn Carter Endowed Chair for Mental Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree during Emory's 162nd commencement ceremony.
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Norman Borlaug, Nobel peace laureate and senior consultant of the Carter Center's Agriculture Program, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal here July 17 for his work on high-yield, disease-resistant varieties of wheat credited with starting the "Green revolution" and alleviating starvation in India and Pakistan in the 1960s. Learn more »
In the following Q&A, panel members from “Two Palestines? What is Risked by a ‘West Bank First’ Policy?” held at The Carter Center in July 2007, answer audience questions that remained following the event. Learn more »
In the following Q&A, panel members from "Two Palestines? What is Risked by a 'West Bank First' Policy?," held at The Carter Center in July 2007, answer audience questions that remained following the event. Learn more »
In 1985, the Live Aid concert alerted the international community to the plight of hundreds of thousands of starving Ethiopians. Learn more »
This article was originally featured in the 2007 Spring issue of Carter Center News
Ethiopian farmer Mamo Tesfaye is no stranger to disease. Four years ago, he could only sit idly outside his home as the growing season came and went. Afflicted with river blindness, he could not see well enough to work his land or provide for his children. But soon after, The Carter Center began distributing the drug Mectizan®, which prevents the disease and even reverses its effects, in his village of Afeta. Today, Tesfaye surveys his land from behind his two brown oxen as he plows his fields.
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President Chávez announced that he would deepen the Bolivarian Revolution and establish "21st century socialism." He draws on Simón Bolívar's 19th century ideas of South American integration, and on a new approach to socialism based on a mixed economy with majority state control, distribution of oil revenues, worker participation in businesses, and greater popular participation in political decision-making.
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Final report of the Carter Center's election observation team on the 2006 Nicaragua elections. Held November 5, 2006, this was the fourth national election in Nicaragua observed by The Carter Center since 1990.
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Many of the governments and nations sustained by Cold War patronage are now facing internal opposition as they attempt to adapt to the new world order. While several of the current conflicts cross borders and involve multiple state actors, these conflicts also often have ethnic, religious, and/or other identity-based roots. Learn more »
When Liberia's first female president won in 2005, her opponent charged that the election results were tainted. But Carter Center Democracy Program Director David Carroll knew otherwise.> Learn more »
Since 1996, The Carter Center’s River Blindness Program has assisted in the delivery of more than 100 million treatments of Mectizan® (donated by Merck Inc.) and conducted health education in 11 endemic countries in Latin America and Africa. The Center is leading the drive to eliminate this blinding parasitic disease where it occurs in the Americas by 2015.
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A few days in the life of a Ghanaian child shows the disabling misery caused by Guinea worm disease, which The Carter Center has been campaigning to eradicate for 22 years. In early 2007, there was a massive outbreak of the disease in Ghana, with Savelugu, Sadia's hometown, located in the Northern Region, at its epicenter. In response, the national program - in partnership with The Carter Center - set up Guinea worm case containment care centers to identify, treat, and educate the victims, most of whom are children. Here is Sadia's story:
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Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Honors Carter Center Trustee Sherry Lansing with Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award Learn more »
In South Africa, men view depression as a sign of weakness. So when veteran journalist Marion Scher wrote a story on the topic for the South African magazine Men's Health, she was thrilled that the men she interviewed allowed her to use their real names. "That's very, very unusual," Scher said. "They really bared their souls to me." Learn more »
To help combat neglected tropical diseases suffered by millions of people, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $10 million to fund two groundbreaking Carter Center initiatives in Nigeria.
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In the community of Tampiong in northern Ghana, Miss Ghana 2005, Lamisi Mbillah, balanced on her high heel sandals, lifts a small black pipe filter above her head so that the hundreds of school children surrounding her could see it. She selects a shy little boy from the crowd to demonstrate how the filter works. The boy complies, using the pipe filter as a straw to drink from the container of water in Mbillah's hand.
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The Carter Center deployed a 62-member delegation to observe Nicaragua’s 2006 election. Carter Center observers David Evans and Sandra Flores, a French citizen, were based in Rio San Juan, which shares its river and border with Costa Rica. They arrived in the region via small plane on a muddy landing strip.
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Kinshasa....A 45-member international Carter Center delegation led by former Prime Minister of Canada Joe Clark observed the Democratic Republic of the Congo's presidential runoff elections Oct. 29. Carter Center Peace Programs Associate Executive Director John Stremlau was co-leader of the delegation.
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Children in the United States may not give grape-flavored cough syrup another thought, but in Eastern Equatoria, Sudan, children look forward to their yearly dose of an antibiotic that tastes like bananas. The medicine, azithromycin, is one part of a strategy designed to prevent blinding trachoma, a bacterial eye disease and leading cause of preventable blindness in the world.
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Two actors take the stage and make wild cartoonish gestures and snappy remarks. This is not the latest sitcom in Hollywood or a new Broadway production but a drama about Guinea worm disease in rural Ghana.
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The muddy pond is as brown as the hillsides surrounding it. It is the peak of dry season in Ghana and Chief Tahanaa looks over the water he has been drinking since he was a child.
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Five-foot-six-inches tall, Angela Ford's weight has varied from 90 pounds to her current 216. She struggles between anorexia and binge eating, and suffers from postpartum stress disorder and depression. She lives in Fulton County, Ga., which has no mental health services available to her. Even if it did, she couldn't afford it on disability checks anyway. Learn more »
Dr. John Stremlau views the recent elections held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as both triumphant and tragic. "It was quite moving to see the Congolese people turn out to vote," he said. "At the same time," he added, "it was depressing to see how the country and its people have suffered so greatly."
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Marcel Wetsh'okonda fights for human rights laws to be passed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country where 1,000 people die each day from disease, hunger, and violence. It is no easy task.
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The afternoon sun catches Yayu Zonveni's face near the door of her otherwise shadowy home in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). She sits in a blue plastic chair waiting for customers to buy the soda and beer she sells from her house; 200 Congolese francs for a Coke, 400 for a beer. It takes her a day and a half to sell a case of 24 bottles, for which she receives a profit of 400 FC, or almost $1US.
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Looking across the many rows of wood-and-mud shacks that house more than 12,000 people in a camp for displaced persons in Margibi County, Liberia, Jacob Lablah knows he still has work to do. The scene inside the camp varies little from day to day. Women sit patiently next to stands selling combs, seasonings, and rice while children carry toys made from tin cans and old plastic bottles, their shirts in tatters and hanging off their shoulders. Men play checkers on a splintered wooden board for hours. People here have no jobs, no means to improve their lives, and no real place to call home. Learn more »
"My mother believed you got trachoma from crying," said Neter Nadew, a 36-year-old Ethiopian mother of four who suffers as her mother did from trachoma, a bacterial eye disease that can lead to blindness. Nadew's mother was forced to pluck out her eyelashes to prevent the onset of blindness in the later stages of the disease.
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His name means "water" and "life" in the Southeastern region of his native Nigeria, and perhaps no name could be more appropriate for Dr. Emmanuel Miri, resident technical adviser for the Carter Center's health programs in Nigeria.
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One of the most important democratic experiments of the last 25 years has been the movement in 600,000 villages across China toward competitive elections, allowing 75 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people to elect their local leaders. The Carter Center has worked with the Chinese government to help standardize the vast array of election procedures taking place in this new democratic environment and to foster good local governance.
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In this Q&A, Dr. Shelley McConnell, senior associate director of the Carter Center’s Americas Program, discusses the groundbreaking media mapping project: its impetus, implementation, and hoped-for impact on democratization in the Americas. Learn more »
A new Human Rights Council for the United Nations was adopted March 15 by the U.N. General Assembly, replacing the Commission on Human Rights, originally established in 1946. In this Q&A, Karin Ryan, senior advisor, Human Rights Program, discusses the Center’s key role in the Council’s passage and what the Council means for global human rights. The new Council plans to elect its first 47 members May 9 and hold its first meeting June 19, after the Commission is disbanded June 16. Learn more »
Former President Jimmy Carter will lead a team of 80 observers today in monitoring legislative elections in the Palestinian territories. The team hopes to provide “an impartial and accurate report” on elections that are as significant as they are controversial. One development that has raised eyebrows in the West: the political participation of Hamas, a group the United States considers a terrorist organization. Learn more »
The Carter Center is the sponsoring agency for the regional coalition OEPA (Onchocerciasis Elimination Program for the Americas). The coalition works to eradicate onchocerciasis - also known as river blindness - in the Americas through semi-annual distribution of the safe and effective oral microfilaricide ivermecin (Mectizan®), donated by Merck & Co, Inc.
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Although election observation has existed for many decades, the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s triggered a dramatic expansion in the number of election observation missions. Hear from Carter Center's David Carroll who manages the Democracy Program's projects on election observation, civil society strengthening, and promotion of the rule of law. Learn more »
The son of an area chief in the former Ankole Kingdom, Moses Katabarwa learned early the importance of family, community, and grassroots action, dedicating his life to improving the well-being of his fellow Ugandans.
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The Carter Center observed Liberia’s historic presidential and legislative elections on Oct. 11, 2005. Only two years earlier, Liberia had emerged from 14 years of civil warfare, which had left over a million people displaced and the country’s infrastructure destroyed. More than 1.3 million people registered to vote, which was estimated to be 90 percent of the eligible population.
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Liberians, their country devastated by years of civil war, head to the polls in October 2005 in the most promising opportunity the country will have to establish a fragile, post-conflict democracy. Liberia's destroyed infrastructure, pervasive poverty, 85 percent illiteracy rate, and bitter electoral history are compounding the challenges of providing civic education and making technical arrangements for the election process.
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Memunatu Alhassan lives in Botingli village in Northern Ghana. She is an active member of her village's radio-listening club and frequently appears on the shows herself. The Carter Center supports the production of trachoma radio shows, pays for airtime, and has provided 250 Freeplay™ radios to the radio-listening clubs.
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Governments have had a difficult time addressing the needs of the people, particularly low-income and marginalized peoples. As a result, satisfaction with democratic performance is eroding, even while support for the principles of democracy remains strong. High crime rates, poor public services, corruption, and chronic unemployment have made the promises of strongmen and populist candidates attractive to many voters. Learn more »
Anxiously queuing to be measured for treatment, a group of 5- to 14-year-olds listens to a health educator just off the main road that passes through their village of Kwa'al, Nigeria.
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Imagine a nation almost half the size of the United States where large portions of the population are sick -- not with just one disease but several at once. Such is the daily reality for those living in Nigeria, a nation with one of the highest burdens of disease in Africa.
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Although the words "reduce stigma" do not appear in the name of any initiatives of the Mental Health Program Thom Bornemann directs, the concept is embodied in virtually everything the program does. Learn more »
In this Q&A, the Carter Center’s Laura Neuman, senior program associate, Americas Program, shares her insights. Access to information is one of the keys to democracy. Allowing people to seek and receive public documents serves as a critical tool for fighting corruption, enabling citizens to more fully participate in public life, making governments more efficient, encouraging investment, and helping persons exercise their fundamental human rights. Learn more »
At the conclusion of the Carter Center’s work to help resolve Venezuela’s political crisis, Dr. Jennifer McCoy, director of the Center’s Americas Program, traveled to Caracas Feb. 24, 2005, to present the Center’s final report on the presidential referendum process. Before leaving, she and former Carter Center Caracas Representative Francisco Diez talked about the Center’s work there for the past two and a half years and the future of Venezuela. Learn more »
A Palestinian woman places her vote inside the ballot box. Despite a boycott by Hamas and impediments to voters, the turnout was about 65 percent, and there was no serious violence either by the Palestinians or Israelis.
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Dr. Nabil Azziz and Dr. Achol Marial live in and love the same country. Both are medical doctors with families and both head health organizations. But their country - Sudan - has been torn by a devastating civil war for the past 20 years. Medically, they are united in the fight against Guinea worm disease. The doctors met at The Carter Center in September 2003.
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A Q&A with Dr. David Carroll, interim director of the Democracy Program, and Dr. Jennifer McCoy, director of the Americas Program on the 2004 U.S. Elections. Learn more »
In a makeshift Guinea worm care center in Savelugu-Nanton, Ghana, 6-year-old Lukma receives treatment for a worm emerging from a blister on the top of his left foot. Abukari Abukari, a local health worker, questions Lukma's mother about her water-filtering practices, reminding her that she must filter all of the family's drinking water to prevent the disease from occurring.
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Yengussie Tebeje, 55, sits outside her hut next to a small fire in the rural Ethiopian village of Mosebo. As flies dart around and land on her worn face, she describes her struggle against trachoma, a debilitating eye disease.
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Sitting on a white plastic chair, Hamisu Isa, 35, listens to members of his lymphatic filariasis support group describe their symptoms, challenges, successes, and hopes. For years, he has suffered from the disease's severest form, elephantiasis – a disfiguring condition that causes grotesque swelling of the legs and genitals. But today, Hamisu's life has turned around. He recently earned a teaching certificate, is teaching mathematics and English at a local elementary school a few times a week, and is working in the market part-time.
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Looking across the many rows of wood-and-mud shacks that house more than 12,000 people in a camp for displaced persons in Margibi County, Liberia, Jacob Lablah knows he still has work to do.
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An assessment of the Carter Center's latrine project in Niger, undertaken to reduce incidence of trachoma, has shown encouraging results. After one year, household latrines are widely accepted, used and maintained.
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Some have called him the "Great One." Living for a week on one small sack of supplies, getting food from people along the way, Abdelgadir El Sid is a legend among field workers fighting disease in Africa.
In the 1970s, he earned his reputation by uncovering the last case of smallpox in a remote village in Somalia. Having been told that no one there had the disease, he suspected villagers might be reluctant to admit the presence of "a pox upon them" out of shame. So he created a commotion, purposely driving his jeep into a ditch, which attracted everyone in the village to witness the scene, including the last remaining victim of smallpox in the world.
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Ridding a country of its last few thousand cases of Guinea worm disease presents a special challenge. Those cases exist mostly in remote areas, where there are few wells and people draw their drinking water from ponds sometimes rife with Guinea worm larvae.
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Larry Fricks, a director in Georgia’s department of mental health, introduced an exciting new and successful concept in mental illness recovery at the Nineteenth Annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy, Nov. 5-6, 2003. Learn more »
Working long hours caring for one of Guatemala's largest coffee plantations and managing six children would leave most people little time to volunteer. Jose Maria Pos, 41, thought the same thing when the Mitzimal farm manager asked him to become the community's river blindness (onchocerciasis) health promoter.
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Many Americans have never heard of dracunculiasis or more commonly, Guinea worm disease, a painful condition that is contracted when a person consumes water contaminated with water fleas carrying infective larvae. Dr. Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben, however, has had Guinea worm on his mind for the past 20 years.
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The Carter Center staff coordinating the Guinea Worm Eradication Program in each country cannot be everywhere all the time. Yet, as long as this crippling disease is active anywhere in a region, eradicating it requires a nearly continuous presence in the endemic areas--mostly to prevent disease transmission.
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Twenty-five years ago, then U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed the landmark U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act into law, making it illegal for American companies to bribe or pay excessive "fees" to conduct business in another country. Today, the Emory University-affiliated Carter Center continues his work through its Council for Ethical Business Practices. Learn more »
Ermino Emilio cannot stop the war that has plagued his country for decades, but he can help people in his region of southern Sudan by protecting them from the further torment of Guinea worm disease. Ermino is the Carter Center's regional coordinator for fighting that disease in Sudan's Bahr el Ghazal Zone, a zone fragmented by the two main warring parties in Sudan.
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The Carter Center leads the global campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease in the countries that remain endemic. Among the most endemic is Togo, where Carter Center Public Relations Coordinator Emily Howard witnessed the debilitating impact that the preventable disease has caused. She observed the crusade of health workers in the field to build hope for millions. Following is her three-part account.
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For 12 hours in November 2001, in Managua, Nicaragua, Oscar Arias Sanchez visited each polling station on his list, diligently noting voting procedures, listening to voters, and querying election officials. Having co-led the Center's 1996 Nicaragua election mission with President Carter and former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, the responsibilities were both sacred and familiar to Arias, the former president of Costa Rica and author of a peace plan for Central America that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987.
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The women of the extended Ramirez family—Lisa, Martha, Maria, Anna, and Yesenia—range in age from 16 to 52 and have been involved with the Carter Center's effort to eliminate onchocerciasis, or river blindness, for a collective total of 25 years.
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Helping to break the cycle of violence that has plagued previous elections in Jamaica, The Carter Center in October observed the island nation's second relatively peaceful election.
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The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court came into force July 1, 2002, some 50 years after the United Nations first called for the establishment of a world tribunal. The Carter Center and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter have been strong advocates for the ICC. Learn more »
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter made history in May 2002 as the first United States president, former or sitting, to visit Cuba since Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959. Among those accompanying him on The Carter Center delegation was Dr. Jennifer McCoy (pictured at left with Cuban healthcare workers), director of the Americas Program at The Carter Center and associate professor of political science at Georgia State University. A special trip de-briefing with Dr. McCoy follows. Learn more »
The following is an excerpt and translation from the Cuban Newspaper, Granma. President Carter’s comments are a direct transcription from a videotape of his speech to faculty and students at the University of Havana, Cuba, on May 14, 2002. Where President Carter’s comments were inaudible, a translation of the interpreter’s translation was substituted. Therefore, it is important to note that this re-translation may result in some variation from what President Carter actually said. Learn more »
A Carter Center delegation traveled to China in June to help its government establish a data collection system for village elections and standardizing procedures nationwide. Their visit is the result of a landmark agreement signed by the People's Republic of China and the Center this spring.
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"The day things changed was when someone finally sat down with me and explained what was going on in my brain," said Danielle Smith. "That's when I realized something actually was wrong with me. I wasn't just crazy." Learn more »
Guinea worm, beware. This was the message at the Seventh African Regional Conference on Guinea Worm Eradication held this spring in Bamako, Mali. More than 200 warriors in the battle against the dreaded disease gathered to plot their strategy for the final push toward eradication. Learn more »
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