UNFPA: Impoverished women bear brunt of climate change
The UN Population Fund has found the world’s primary agricultural workers — impoverished women — will bear the brunt of catastrophic climate change resulting from global warming. The UNFPA called for greater equality for women to relieve the disproportionate burden they are bound to experience from weather-related natural disasters, and their consequences for food, water and energy.

Food summit finds little financing for global-hunger fight A summit on world hunger at the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization headquarters ended with pledges to increase aid for agricultural development, but no concrete commitments for financing. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened the summit with sobering statistics on the state of world hunger, noting 17,000 children die every day. “Small-holder farmers are the heart and soul of food security and poverty reduction. Our job is not just to feed the hungry but to empower the hungry to feed themselves,” Ban said.

Sri Lanka camps breeding anger
Ethnic Tamils and human-rights groups are growing increasingly frustrated by the extended government use of internment camps to house Tamil refugees. Six months after the government declared victory over the Tamil Tigers, around 200,000 people remain in the camps. Authorities say they are screening for any remaining rebels, but observers worry the continued detention might stoke ethnic tensions.

Tobacco poison surrounds child workers
In Malawi, villagers, including children, exposed to harmful waste from tobacco processors. The children pick through mountainous piles of waste tobacco and sweep it up with their bare hands into giant bags in the hope of scraping a living. From behind a veil of dust, they stare back at us with bloodshot eyes.
- British American Tobacco announces inquiry; Alliance One says it will build wall to keep children away from waste

More than 2,000 Zimbabweans flee, fearing attacks
Fearing a resurgence of xenophobic attacks, around 2,500 Zimbabwean migrants have taken refuge in government buildings in De Doorns, a farming town about 140km from Cape Town, South Africa, after some of their shacks in an informal settlement were attacked and demolished, said a police official.

AFRICA: “The fewer the children the better the care”
Africa will fail to achieve most UN Millennium Development Goals unless countries adopt effective family planning programmes and control rapid population growth, experts warn.
“Africa has not done well in areas of family planning,” Khama Rogo, World Bank senior adviser, said. “It is not that we cannot do well; we have not committed ourselves… family planning and population growth have a cross-cutting impact.”

AFGHANISTAN: Schools to reopen for exams after H1N1 shutdown
The government has decided to reopen all schools from 23 November to 12 December to allow 7.5 million schoolchildren across Afghanistan to take exams. On 1 November Afghanistan’s National Disasters Management Commission declared an H1N1 health emergency and ordered a shutdown of all schools and universities for three weeks. Up to nine million students and teachers were affected by the decision which was also criticized by some observers as “politically motivated”.

YEMEN: Malnourished children arriving at al-Mazraq IDP camp
Aid workers at al-Mazraq camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Haradh District, Hajjah Governorate, northernYemen, say more and more children are arriving at the camp in a state of moderate or severe malnourishment. Khalid Shaibani from the UNICEF-run therapeutic feeding centre (TFC) at the camp told IRIN the number of malnourished children was increasing by the day as new IDP families arrived.

VIETNAM: Ethnic minorities lose out on maternal healthcare
The birth rate in rapidly developing Vietnam has dropped in recent years while maternal health and antenatal standards have risen - albeit only for the dominant ethnic groups. Ethnic minorities mostly still give birth at home, without a healthcare worker or midwife, specialists say.