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
Give hope to abandoned children. For the celebration of the second anniversary of Niono’s Orphanage based in Mali (West Africa), this video was made to thank all those who participate in the realisation of the project. Today many abandoned children are alive thanks to the existence of the center.
Beatrice Leuwe – ChangeMaker
The recent acid-throwing attack on a teenage Afghan girl and her two sisters has again focused attention on the fates of child brides. The 17-year-old girl in the Kunduz province, north of Kabul, was apparently supported by her family in rejecting the match with an older suitor, who is suspected in the incident.
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
I welcome “Danica” as the 7 000 000th new-born to the World! She and all the other children have the right to live in a better and safer world!
The UN refugee agency is continuing to distribute water, food and medical services to famine refugees in the Dadaab camps near the Kenya-Somalia border, but has suspended all non-life-saving activities after the abductions Thursday of two female Spanish aid workers. Police say it is not yet clear who kidnapped the workers, employees of Medecins Sans Frontieres, but they are believed to have been taken into Somalia.
Kenyan police say they believe the women have been take to Somalia. Nearly half a million people have fled drought and conflict in Somalia to seek assistance in Dadaab.
Mr Nyabera, from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), said the suspension would last for a few days while security was increased in the area. Read more on: BBC
BBC presenter Nel Hedayat travels to India and Bangladesh, countries with two of the highest rates of child marriage, to chronicle what life is like to be one of the 10 million girls worldwide who are married off each year before they reach the age of 18. The 23-year-old Hedayat has a legacy of child marriage in her family, as both of her grandmothers and an aunt were married as children in her native Afghanistan.
Dinesh Sharma, a local non-governmental organisation worker, explained that in remote villages child marriage is usually fully supported by the entire community, and it is rare for someone to inform the police so they can be stopped.
While child brides in Rajasthan tend to be married off very young, it is usually to grooms of a similar age and it is not until they are older, about 15 or 16, that they actually start living together as man and wife. More on: BBC
Fiscal austerity measures being adopted by governments to combat the global economic downturn are heaping misery upon the world’s poor, especially children, who already are suffering from food, fuel and financial shocks, according to a study by the UN Children’s Fund. Cuts to wages, benefits and subsidies, as well as tax increases, could have “irreversible impacts” on the most vulnerable in developing countries, UNICEF found.
A study by the UN children’s fund, Unicef, said there would be “irreversible impacts” of wage cuts, tax increases, benefit reductions and reductions in subsidies that bore most heavily on the most vulnerable in low-income nations. Read more on: The Guardian
The United Nations has put the health and well-being of women and girls in the forefront of this week’s General Assembly meetings with the Every Woman Every Child initiative. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon aims to build a global effort where private and public stakeholders are working in unison to provide better health coverage and empower women and girls to promote development within their communities.
The oppression of women and girls used to be a fringe issue. This week at the U.N., the 60-year-old institution has taken the health and human rights of women and girls to the center of the conversation. Read more – Take Action
