Over the past 20 years, humanitarian aid along with economic growth and good government have combined to help 4 million more children each year to live beyond their fifth birthdays, according to a report for UNICEF and Save the Children. “Where funding gaps exist, for example for primary education or child health, aid can make all the difference,” said Justin Forsyth, head of Save the Children.

But Save the Children says it is hard to show the exact impact of aid on its own, because it generally works best when used alongside good governance and economic growth.
More on: BBC

More than 2,000 children in the Kanem region of western Chad were admitted last month to nutrition treatment centers as a result of the drought and poor harvests across Africa’s Sahel, where an estimated 15 million people in half a dozen countries — more than a million children under 5 — face malnutrition. Part of the problem in Chad is not environmental, but systemic: The country’s health care system in Kanem is characterized in interviews as “dysfunctional.”

Part of the problem is due to chronic food insecurity and drought that has affected much of the Sahel this year: This year some 3.6 million Chadians are food insecure due to poor rains, according to the World Food Programme. Dangerous care practices also play their role: Giving babies dirty water instead of breast milk, burning their chests when they have diarrhoea, among others.

The United Nations estimates at least 15 million people in the Sahel could be affected, including 3.6 million in Chad, 5.4 million in Niger, 3 million in Mali, 1.7 million in Burkina Faso and hundreds of thousands in Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania respectively.

Read more on: AlertNet, AllAfrica Global Media

As of Friday afternoon, almost 71 million people had watched the video on YouTube or Vimeo; millions more were tweeting about the film using the hashtag #StopKony. Invisible Children chief executive Ben Keesey says he’s been in “absolute shock” over the video’s success.

UNHCR launched the five-year Light Years Ahead campaign in January 2011, aiming to raise funds to improve the basic cooking and lighting needs of more than 450,000 refugees in seven African countries.

To date, the agency has raised US$1.4 million, enabling it to purchase and distribute some 200 solar-powered street lights, almost 15,000 lanterns and more than 8,000 fuel-efficient stoves in camps in Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, the Sudan and Uganda. Read more

Acid attacks against women are not uncommon in Afghanistan, but many do not come to light, especially if they are the result of a private clan dispute. In a notorious case three years ago, a dozen schoolgirls in the southern city of Kandahar were splashed with acid by motorcycle-borne assailants who later said they were paid to carry out the attack by Taliban insurgents opposed to educating girls. Read more on Los Angeles Times/World Now blog

India has the world’s largest number of slaves, among them an increasing number of women and girls sold into marriage.
Women’s and children’s rights activists are sounding the alarm over the abuse of young girls as part of a growing trend for bridal slavery. Young girls are sold into marriage for as little as $120, then forced to work as day laborers and sex slaves to the men who purchase them.

India has one of the world’s fastest growing economies. But the southwest Asian country also has the largest number of slaves in the world. Read more on: Al-Jazeera