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Last month, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a “state of calamity” as Guatemala experiences the worst drought in 70 years. Approximately half of the population lives below the poverty line and 50 percent of children are suffering from chronic malnutrition. But these are only the surface casualties of a vulnerable nation ravaged by 36 years of civil war, genocide and now, the encroaching drug war spilling over from the northern border with Mexico.

Some of the countries most at risk from climate change are low-lying nations. And chief among them is the South Asian country of Bangladesh. Rising seas threaten to inundate this already disaster-prone land. But Bangladesh is experimenting with new ways to protect itself. One possible solution uses floods to prevent floods. It’s an idea that was forced on the government in a revolt by desperate farmers. Reporter Daniel Grossman has our story.

Famines often occur during times of drought, but their causes go much deeper than a lack of rain. With East Africa now facing widespread hunger, we look back at a major food crisis that struck the Western African nation of Niger in 2005. Reporter David Hecht examines the roots of that crisis and finds some of them stretching across Niger’s border, to the neighboring country of Nigeria.

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Pakistani singer Shehzad Roy spent much of his childhood in the U.S., and was troubled by the poor quality of public education he saw when he got back to Pakistan. So he founded an advocacy group called the Zindagi Trust, designed to reform failing public schools.

This program re-aired on World Vision on Oct 2, 2010.

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Mary Wiltenburg looks back on her year with Bill Clinton Hadam, a 9-year-old Tanzanian refugee now living in the United States.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls the sexual violence in eastern Congo "one of mankind's greatest atrocities." An update on the security crisis and what the U.S. and other nations can do to help stabilize the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Guests

John Prendergast, co-chair of the ENOUGH Project, an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity

Mvemba Dizolele, former Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grantee and national fellow, Hoover Institution

Tune in to North Carolina Public Radio's "The Story" to hear Kwame Dawes talk about HOPE, his poetry that will be performed at the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC, on August 6 and 7.

Sean Gallagher joined a panel discussion with China Radio International on Thursday, July 30th, to speak about desertification in China. The discussion ran for an hour, from 10:00-11:00 a.m. Beijing time (10:00-11:00 p.m. EDT).

The West African country of Guinea-Bissau is one of the poorest nations in the world, is a base for narcotics heading to Europe and has a big crack cocaine problem.

It has suffered a series of coups and a civil war. Earlier this year the head of the armed forces was killed and, a few hours later, the president was murdered in retaliation.

But are things turning around for Guinea-Bissau? The killings led to elections being held last weekend.

Sean Gallagher does a one-on-one interview about his work on desertification in China. Three days later, he joined a panel on the same station to discuss the issue with experts.

War decimated the landscape of Vietnam. The drastic economic times that followed drove Vietnam into the globalizing economy at lightning speed — and the country soon became the second largest exporter of rice in the world. After the war, Vietnam catapulted into the global marketplace, fast becoming the second largest producer of rice in the world. But the price of this rice is still being calculated: one out of every seven people in Vietnam goes hungry, for lack of rice, and farmers are spending more on chemical fertilizer than they are earning in profits.