CNN reports on horrific crimes against children in the restive, gang controlled slums of Port-au-Prince

In Haiti, UNICEF and local officials report that kidnapped children are being raped, tortured and murdered. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti has been working with the national police force to try to halt such crimes. They suspect that criminal gangs are responsible.

The agency reports that as many as 2,000 children a year are trafficked to the Dominican Republic, often with their parents' support. And about 1,000 children are working as spies, messengers or soldiers for armed gangs in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

Earlier in the month, a demonstration was held in Haiti's capital after a 16-year-old hostage was murdered and other hostages had been raped and lynched, including infants, UNICEF said.

Via UN News Centre:

Although over 6 million children returned to Afghanistan's classrooms a month ago at the start of a new school year, United Nations agencies said today that half of the war-torn country's young people are excluded from receiving an education, the bulk of them girls.

This is the case even though the enrolment of girls, who were barred from going to school under the repressive Taliban regime, has increased significantly in the past five years, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

'We still have 1.2 million girls of school age who do not have access to schools,' said Catherine Mbengue, UNICEF Country Representative in Afghanistan. 'We have a lot of work to do to make sure all conditions are met so that schools are friendly to girls.'

UN agencies have been working with the government to build new schools, conduct teacher trainings (particularly female teachers), and talking to communities about the importance of education in attempts to fill this huge gap.

This week is actually Global Action Week for Education. Their "Education for All" goal has a large focus specifically on education for girls, whom are effected disproportionately throughout the world.

While over 10 million women and children in developing countries continue to die every year from preventable and treatable causes, a new report released today by UN agencies and partners calls for improved health care systems to reduce maternal and child deaths:

'Tracking Progress in Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival' finds that few of the 68 developing countries that account for 97 per cent of maternal and child deaths worldwide are providing the necessary health care to save lives.

The 2008 report was released today as leading global health experts, policy-makers and parliamentarians convene in Cape Town, South Africa, to address further efforts to slash maternal and child mortality by 2015, part of a set of internationally-agreed targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

And this is not to mention that donor funding for maternal, newborn and child health has actually increased over the past few years. So while there has been much improvement, the fact that health care needs are so high in these countries still result in health care programs being "grossly unfunded," says the report.

A UN report released today shows significant progress in treating children with AIDS and preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, but not without a call for greater efforts.

In 2005, only 11 percent of women were getting drugs to prevent transmission. Thanks to UNICEF's Unite for Children, Unite Against AIDS initiative, 31 percent are now getting treatment. There's also been a 70 percent increase in children who are receiving anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to 127,000 per year. "That’s enormous progress," says UNICEF Chief of HIV and AIDS Jimmy Kolker.

But obviously more efforts are needed. The report identifies improvements and challenges in four key areas: preventing HIV transmission from mothers to children (PMTCT); providing paediatric treatment, preventing infection among adolescents and young people; and protecting and supporting children affected by AIDS.

The report also addresses how various gender injustices call for women's rights efforts to be embedded within the work being done to decrease the occurrence of PMTCT. Examples include how domestic violence is often a huge barrier to routine testing programs, or the ways that cultural stigmatization prevents many women from seeking PMTCT services. All are addressed in the report, as well as new working strategies to further the progress already made.

Make sure to check out the full report.

Nearly 3 million children in Niger will be vaccinated against measles as part of a UN-backed immunization campaign.

"The overriding goal is to prevent measles deaths and disability, and to give each child in Niger the best start in life," UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) country representative Akhil Iyer said. "This campaign is testimony to the commitment of the Government and a remarkable example of successful partnership between different players."

The drive is led by the West African country's Ministry of Health, with financial and technical support from UNICEF, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and a coalition of other partners.

More

The press room here cleared out about 15 minutes ago. Angelina Jolie is in the room next door announcing her new Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, "a historic education partnership to address the needs of children living in conflict, post-conflict refugee, and emergency situations." This alliance has been built out of a long and diverse list of partners including UNICEF, Save the Children, the Sesame Workshop, UNHCR (Angelina's tie-in). They are making the commitment to help 350,000 children go to school and improve the learning environment of another 650,000 -- including 200,000 Iraqi refugees (maybe Angelina advocated for this after her recent trip) and 300,000 children affected by Darfur. As you can see from the photo above, there were many up on the stage, but Angelina got about 80 percent of the questions.

Actor Ewan McGregor, a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador, is riding his motorcycle from northern Scotland to the southernmost tip of Africa in an effort to raise awareness surrounding children's issues.

McGregor, along with fellow actor Charley Boorman will make several stops in countries along the way.

This is not the first lengthy ride for the two friends: their first long-distance biking trip – called Long Way Round – was in 2004, where they rode from London to New York, stopping to participate in UNICEF projects in Mongolia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan along the way.

On this recent trip, Mr. McGregor and Mr. Boorman have met with children who have lost limbs to landmines in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. After a two-year displacement due to the 1998-2000 Ethiopia-Eritrea war, hundreds of thousands of people returned to Tigray to find their homes, lands and schools heavily mined.

"Educating children about landmines is so vital for children's futures...With landmines and unexploded ordnance lying in homes, fields, rivers and schools in Ethiopia and other countries, I can really see how UNICEF's Mine Risk Education is an essential life-saving intervention," said McGregor.

More

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called on governments, communities and families to increase efforts to prevent child trafficking.

UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman noted that every year globally, about 1.2 million children are trafficked. "Children are trafficked into prostitution, into armed groups to serve as child soldiers, to provide cheap or unpaid labour, and to work as house servants or beggars."

Trafficking exposes children to violence, sexual abuse, severe neglect, and HIV infection, she pointed out, while violating children's right to be protected, to grow up in a family environment and to have access to education.

UNICEF called for punishing the perpetrators of human trafficking, which generates an estimated $9.5 billion a year and fuels other criminal activities.

More

Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy, after completing a three-day fact-finding mission to Lebanon, called on all sides in the Middle East to respect international humanitarian law to ensure that schools are "zones of peace."

After visiting the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, [Coomaraswamy] said she was shocked to see the destruction caused by last year's conflict between Hizbollah and Israel and its considerable impact on children.

"All parties should respect International Humanitarian Law with regard to the protection of children and ensure that schools are zones of peace. For the sake of future generations, a framework for a permanent peace should be negotiated with Israel," she said.

More

"Elements of Sri Lanka's security forces are helping a breakaway rebel group abduct children to fight the separatist Tamil Tigers, while the rebels themselves continue to use child soldiers in their conflict against the Government, a United Nations adviser has said after a 10-day assessment mission to the strife-torn country. "It is increasingly clear that children are at risk from all sides," Allan Rock, the Special Adviser to the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict on Sri Lanka said yesterday." More

The UN Secretary-General's Study on Violence against Children is a landmark effort to provide a detailed global picture of the nature, extent and causes of such violence and act to prevent it. The final report will be presented to the General Assembly today. More

NYT: "By the United Nations' latest estimate, more than 49 million sub-Saharan children age 14 and younger worked in 2004, 1.3 million more than at the turn of the century just four years earlier.

Their tasks are not merely the housework and garden-tending common to most developing societies. They are prostitutes, miners, construction workers, pesticide sprayers, haulers, street vendors, full-time servants, and they are not necessarily even paid for their labor.

Some are as young as 5 and 6 years old."

NYT: "Efforts to greatly expand antiretroviral treatment for AIDS in poor countries are not reaching a vast majority of children who need it, a World Health Organization official said [in Toronto] on Wednesday.

The official, Dr. Kevin M. De Cock, who directs the organization's AIDS program, said that an estimated 2.3 million children 15 and under around the world are infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and that 800,000 of them needed antiretroviral drugs to stay alive. Of the 800,000, only 60,000 to 100,000 are receiving therapy. While the children account for 14 percent of AIDS deaths, they make up only 6 percent of recipients of antiretroviral drug therapy. Many of the children are orphans.

"We must conclude that scale-up has so far left children behind," Dr. De Cock said in a featured talk at the 16th International Conference on AIDS, which has attracted 24,000 participants. His comments drew on an extensive review of progress in efforts to step up antiretroviral treatment.

At the same time, Dr. De Cock said, fewer than 10 percent of pregnant women with H.I.V. in poor and middle-income countries are receiving the simple regimen of pills that can prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus to their newborns. By contrast, rich countries have virtually eliminated pediatric AIDS."

"We're concerned because diarrhoeal diseases are a major killer of children," Edward Carwardine, UNICEF senior communications officer, said. "Forty percent of the collected stool specimens tested positive for cholera - all the more reason to accelerate our response.

"South Darfur has been a particular cause of concern, with five new suspected cases reported on 10 August and 13 on 11 August," he added. Since April, 701 cases had been reported in South Darfur alone." [More]

New York Times: In a report released in July, Unicef described the death toll in Congo as a "tsunami of death every six months."

"It is fair to say that the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been the deadliest for children in the past 60 years," said Richard Brennan, health director of the International Rescue Committee. "No other conflict has had the same levels of excess mortality, and children have borne a disproportionate degree of this burden."

About 30,000 children have been forced into militias, while untold thousands of girls have been raped, according to the Unicef report. Children labor under toxic conditions in gold and diamond mines. Orphans choke the streets of Kinshasa, the capital, bedraggled platoons in Congo's vast army of want."

"More than 250,000 child soldiers are still participating in armed conflicts around the world and tens of thousands of girls are being sexually exploited by combatants, a senior UN official said.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, told the UN Security Council: "Since 2003, over 14 million children have been forcibly displaced ... and between 8,000 and 10,000 children are killed or maimed each year by land mines." [More]

"Every day 1,200 people, half of them children, are killed in the conflict-hit Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because of violence, disease and malnutrition, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a report issued today.

The report, Child Alert: DRC, also states that more children under age five die each year in the African country than in China -- a country with 23 times the population. It draws attention to the appalling fact that the total countrywide death toll every six months is similar to that for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed more than 230,000 people in 12 countries." [More]

From CNN's Christiane Amanpour: "According to the United Nations, there are 12 million AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa alone, and in four short years that number will skyrocket to 18.4 million. That means AIDS orphans will make up 15 to 20 percent of the population in some African countries.

In Africa, less than 5 percent of HIV-positive children who need treatment have access to it. And every day, another 1,800 children are infected with HIV, mostly at birth or from their mother's milk.

In Europe or America, this is almost unheard of because there is effective treatment to stop pregnant mothers from passing on the virus to their newborns. But in Africa, there is little access to this life-saving prenatal therapy. Furthermore, only 10 percent of pregnant women in Africa have access to basic treatment that could half the rate of transmission of HIV to their newborns.

"It's another grotesque double standard," said Stephen Lewis, the U.N. AIDS envoy to Africa."

"The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) issued an urgent appeal Monday for 7.7 million dollars to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of the 'most vulnerable' children in Ethiopia during the second half of 2006.

UNICEF said in a statement that unless it secured the funding, it would have to cancel the second half of a programme which reaches 7 million children twice a year with vitamin A supplements, measles vaccination and anti-malaria nets." [More]

Alertnet: "The United Nations launched a drive on Thursday to "disaster-proof" schools to prevent children being crushed in earthquakes and swept away in floods.

Tragedies like last year's Pakistan quake, when collapsing classrooms killed 16,000 children, underlined the urgent need for action, U.N. disaster reduction chief Salvano Briceno said.

The two-pronged campaign will also push governments to make risk reduction part of the curriculum.

"More than 200 million people are affected by disasters every year, a third of them are often children ... Educating about disasters can make the difference between life and death," Briceno told a launch ceremony in Paris."

"Poor nutrition contributes to the deaths of some 5.6 million children every year, and the world has fallen far short in efforts to reduce hunger by half before 2015, the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Tuesday. In its report, UNICEF said one of every four children under age 5, including 146 million children in the developing world, is underweight.

The most troublesome area in the world is South Asia, where 46 percent of children are underweight. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan account for half of the world's underweight children even though they have only 30 percent of the world's population of children under 5." [Read more]

Rick Reilly: "I've never asked for anything before, right? Well, sorry, I'm asking now.

We need nets. Not hoop nets, soccer nets or lacrosse nets. Not New Jersey Nets or dot-nets or clarinets. Mosquito nets.

See, nearly 3,000 kids die every day in Africa from malaria. And according to the World Health Organization, transmission of the disease would be reduced by 60% with the use of mosquito nets and prompt treatment for the infected."

Three thousand kids! That's a 9/11 every day!

Put it this way: Let's say your little Justin's Kickin' Kangaroos have a big youth soccer tournament on Saturday. There are 15 kids on the team, 10 teams in the tourney. And there are 20 of these tournaments going on all over town. Suddenly, every one of these kids gets chills and fever, then starts throwing up and then gets short of breath. And in seven to 10 days, they're all dead of malaria.

We gotta get these nets. They're coated with an insecticide and cost between $4 and $6. You need about $10, all told, to get them shipped and installed. Some nets can cover a family of four. And they last four years. If we can cut the spread of disease, 10 bucks means a kid might get to live. Make it $20 and more kids are saved.

So, here's the ask: If you have ever gotten a thrill by throwing, kicking, knocking, dunking, slamming, putting up, cutting down or jumping over a net, please go to a special site we've set up through the United Nations Foundation. The address is: UNFoundation.org/malaria. Then just look for the big SI's Nothing But Net logo (or call 202-887-9040) and donate $20. Bang. You might have just saved a kid's life.

Or would you rather have the new Beastie Boys CD?" Read the rest...

© WFP/Nancy Palus

"Violence and lack of money is hampering humanitarian help for Sudan's Darfur region and malnutrition is rising again, the United Nations' Children's Fund said on Wednesday.

"We want to sound the alarm. We must do everything to stop this deterioration," UNICEF's representative for Sudan Ted Chaiban told journalists.

The number of people fleeing their homes to escape fighting between rebels, the army and government-backed militias had risen by 200,000 to more than 2 million in the past three months, he said." [Read more]

"At least 300 child soldiers in southern Sudan handed in their guns and uniforms on Monday and will return to their families as part of an ongoing demobilisation exercise supported by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the agency said." [More]

"[T]he decision by the government of Sudan to bar UN relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland from Darfur is as perverse as it is deplorable. It is not, however, atypical. The government appears to pursue a systematic policy of making life difficult for the NGOs and international organisations working to help the people of Darfur. Visa applications for humanitarian workers take weeks to process. Access to essential fuel is limited. Movement between regions is impeded. The obstruction and harassment is subtle but insidious and seriously affects the ability of the aid agencies to do their job....

The deployment of the African Union force in 2004 left the task of protecting the civilians of a region the size of France to 7,000 peacekeepers who are seriously underequipped and overstretched and who lack the mandate to do anything other than monitor the country's tenuous ceasefire. So the people of Darfur have been caught in limbo between warring factions not interested in peace, a government wishing to ward off foreign involvement and an international community hoping for the best.

The people I spoke to in the camps will not return to their homes until the arrival of an international force with the mandate, capacity and political will to keep the peace. The only practical way to guarantee this is through the UN. The African Union has made a reasonable start, but it lacks expertise and experience.

It should be transformed as soon as possible into a UN-led operation with a beefed-up Chapter Six mandate, backed by extensive logistical help, including air support as necessary, from Nato." [More]

© UNICEF/HQ00-0631/LeMoyne

"On World Water Day, as the 4th World Water Forum here draws to a close, the voices of debate and discussion have fallen silent to hear and consider a clarion call to action from children.

Ten young water activists took the stage yesterday, side by side with over 30 ministers of water and environment at the global meeting, to discuss children's role in the world water crisis. They represented the 112 participants in the Children's World Water Forum, a parallel event ending in Mexico City today. And they spoke out for the hundreds of millions of children worldwide struggling to survive without safe drinking water." [Read more]

"A Congolese militia leader accused of conscripting children for war will be the first suspect to face trial at the International Criminal Court, the chief prosecutor of the ICC said on Saturday.... The U.N. children's agency UNICEF said Lubanga's arrest showed the international community would not tolerate the use of children in armed conflict."

"The average age of sexual debut is just 12, according to government research. In a few traditional communities, girls are forced to have sex with older men as part of rites initiating them into adulthood. But most have their first experience with a friend or relative.

Girls who have lost one or both parents to HIV/Aids are especially vulnerable to exploitation. In cities like Blantyre, it is not unusual for them to have several "boyfriends" who support them, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) in Malawi. This in turn exposes them to the risk of infection with HIV, the virus that causes Aids.

Some older men will marry young girls after their wives die of HIV/Aids because they believe sex with a virgin will "cleanse" them, says Banda. It is also traditional in some cultures for a man to marry his wife's younger sister if she dies." [Full story]

© UNICEF/Pirozzi

"Global efforts to tackle AIDS are neglecting the 15 million children who have lost at least one parent to the disease, experts told an international conference on HIV on Thursday.

In sub-Saharan Africa alone an estimated 18 million children will have lost one or both parents to AIDS by 2010 - an increase of six million in just four years, according to U.N. forecasts.

"Despite progress in some areas, children are still the missing face of AIDS in the global response to the pandemic," said Ann Veneman, executive director of the U.N. children's fund UNICEF. "The world must act now, urgently and decisively, to ensure that the next generation is AIDS-free." [Read more]

See also:

World Not Doing Nearly Enough to Protect Children Affected by AIDS

Global Partners Forum Seeks to Build Support for Children Affected by HIV/AIDS

UNICEF: Unite for Children Against AIDS

© UNICEF Somalia/2006/Bannon
At a supplementary feeding centre in Isdoorto, Somalia,
a child waits in line with her mother for Unimix,
a highly fortified food.

"UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman is calling for immediate action in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa to keep children from dying. More than 8 million people across Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti are affected by the drought. The severe crisis is threatening the lives of 1.5 million children under the age of five.

"This is an area of Africa that often suffers from drought and, when drought occurs, it impacts the nutrition of children so we are concerned that children will suffer from malnutrition," said Ms. Veneman. "They are more susceptible to disease and in these situations previously, we've seen mortality rates for children increase so we want to get into the area early so we can address the needs particularly of the children." [Read more]

"Patched-together dolls, drawings, poems and other personal effects give a glimpse of childhood turned unthinkable during the horrors of the Holocaust in an exhibition which opened today at the United Nations as part of a week of remembrance there.

No Child's Play, a travelling exhibit produced by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, is part of a series of activities leading up to 27 January, which has been designated by the General Assembly as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of genocide.

With the theme Remembrance and Beyond, the events are meant to be not only reminders of past crimes and their victims, but also to spark an awareness among the international community and society at large, in order to help prevent future acts of genocide.

"The exhibition serves as a poignant caution to us all to remember the base savagery of which human beings are capable, and as a call to arms to ensure that we all act to prevent such horrors," Shashi Tharoor, UN Under-Secretary-General for Public Information, said at the opening of the children's exhibit." [Read more]

Also see: UN to Hold Solemn Events in Memory of Holocaust

Children in Danna village now have warm clothing
to help them fend off the biting winds of winter
and bitter cold. © UNHCR/B.Baloch

"As winter tightens its grip on the earthquake-affected mountainous areas near Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, staff of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) are distributing warm clothing to vulnerable young survivors.

Teams from the agency recently made the difficult journey to Danna village, traveling some 30 kilometres north of Muzaffarabad city over curved roads beset by landslides.

UNHCR tents in the village provide temporary shelter to families that lost their homes and many loved ones in the 8 October earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people." [Read more]

"Hundreds of millions of children are suffering from severe exploitation and discrimination and have become virtually invisible to the world, UNICEF said Wednesday in a major report that explores the causes of exclusion and the abuses children experience.

Launching the report in London, UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman said millions of children disappear from view when trafficked or forced to work in domestic servitude. Other children, such as street children, live in plain sight but are excluded from fundamental services and protections. Not only do these children endure abuse, most are shut out from school, healthcare and other vital services they need to grow and thrive.

'The State of the World's Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible' (www.unicef.org/sowc06) is a sweeping assessment of the world's most vulnerable children, whose rights to a safe and healthy childhood are exceptionally difficult to protect. These children are growing up beyond the reach of development campaigns and are often invisible in everything from public debate and legislation, to statistics and news stories" [Read more]

A thoughtful post from Carol Gee at South by Southwest:

"How does it feel to be hungry, really hungry? It is not the kind of hunger that comes with having missed a meal. It is also not the kind of hunger one feels when doing a very purposeful "cleansing fast," or fasting on Fridays, in the old days of an observed liturgical holy week.

This hunger is that which comes from not getting anything to eat, or very little to eat, on a regular basis for days, weeks, months or years at a time.... There are entire nations starving or desperately endangered today; right now. And there far too many people in these United States that are also hungry. This week, this coming Thanksgiving Day, the weekend following, millions are hungry. For many of the rest of us, we will be trying to figure out what to do with all our leftovers. A recent Reuters story focused on the just published United Nations report on hunger in the world which states that 6 million children a year die from hunger related causes."

Read the rest, it's a great post. We'll see you on Monday...

"No developing region is on track to meet the interna