Children

The largest recorded earthquake, an 8.9 on the Richter scale, hit Japan’s northern coast on Friday afternoon, generating a thirty-foot tsunami setting off warning systems in fifty-three countries (WSJ). The quake struck just two hundred and fifty miles from Tokyo, and caused fires to erupt in several parts of the city and causing a closure of […]

As the violence in Libya continues to escalate as the air attacks on cities continue and growing numbers of refugees flee cities and now remain trapped on the borders, it threatens to turn into a full-scale humanitarian crisis. More than 200,000 people have already fled the fighting in Libya, most of them crossing into the […]

Today, March 8th is International Women’s Day (IWD), a day that was established to commemorate the struggle women and girls across the globe have endured in order to obtain their ‘full’ human rights.  The 2011 theme is; Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women.  This year is […]

The Rural Poverty Report 2011, which was released by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), provides a comprehensive look at rural poverty, its global consequences and the prospects for eradicating it.  The report contains estimates on the numbers of rural poor people in the developing world, poverty rates in rural areas, and the percentage of poor people residing in rural areas. Since the […]

In April of 2010 health officials stated that Guinea worm disease was on target for elimination (CNN).  Officials stated that they believed that they can eradicate Guinea worm disease, a water-born parasitic disease, entirely by 2015 by changing water-sanitation habits and ensuring access to clean water in sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease has yet to […]

I was recently faced with the question regarding children in the developing world versus that in those in the West or developed world.  The question being asked was; are those in the West leaning to live in a world of excess? Secondly the question was raised;  Is this unrealistic view point (of excess and over […]

International educators have been stressing the importance of universal education for years, as leaders, NGOs, and research all attest that it is the must sustainable way aid developing countries.  Universal education is the best way to reduce poverty and increase public health and living standards for people across the globe. Universal Education is goal #2, […]

Today, UNICEF launched its flagship annual publication, The State of the World’s Children 2011 Report, entitled Adolescence – An Age of Opportunity.  The annual report examines the factors and lives of some 1.2 billion youth aged 10 to 19 years-old around the globe, the majority, 88 percent, of which live in developing countries and are […]

Today the United Nations officially launched UN Women, an agency designed to help promote gender equality across the globe.  The new branch has been highly publicized and long awaited, thus there was much excitement as it finally became a reality earlier today. UN Women was unanimously voted on by the 192-member General Assembly following years […]

Gender-based violence can be directed against young girls and females from all cultures and socioeconomic classes—although the poor and dispossessed are more readily targeted. Women and young female children are targeted because they are the most vulnerable and powerless generally—especially in underdeveloped and conflict-ridden countries. In desperate situations of survival, female child soldiers may be […]

In Africa, it estimated that half the ranks of progovernment paramilitaries and rebel soldiers are recruited, or abducted, child soldiers, of which approximately half of which are girls, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (IRC), at the Second International Policy Conference on the African Child: Violence Against Girls in Africa (2006).   In […]

Female child combatants are overlooked both in the media, as well as in the rehabilitation process.  All too often, female child soldiers are also expected to perform sexual services for older male soldiers; in many countries of conflict, girls in armed forces are claimed by militia leaders as “wives.” The use of child soldiers in armed conflict […]