Children

Congo warlord accused of recruiting child soldiers set free
Judges at the Hague released a Congolese warlord, held on charges of coercing thousands of children into military service, after prosecutors withheld evidence supplied by the UN that would seem to exonerate him on certain of the charges.

Egypt launches campaign to slow population growth
A new campaign in Egypt attempts to dissuade citizens from having large families as the country struggles with population growth. Birth control is legal but frowned upon by some Egyptians, while abortion remains outlawed and vasectomies are not commonly performed. Egypt’s population has nearly doubled since Hosni Mubarak assumed the presidency in 1981.

Fistula crisis in Uganda
Experts say that, though many women in the Teso subregion of Uganda suffer from fistula, many cases are neither known, reported, nor treated, due to ignorance, limited materials, and limited personnel. It is estimated that nearly 3% of Ugandan women suffer from fistula.

Low-tech filters give Sri Lanka safer water
The introduction of clay pots fortified with low-tech filters by the American Red Cross has provided thousands of Sri Lankan families with access to safe drinking water and is helping to prevent the spread of disease. Water-borne diseases are the country’s number one cause of malnutrition.

Abortion rate on the rise in Middle East
Despite legal and religious restrictions against abortion in much of the Arab world, changing social values and economic realities as well as demographic shifts have contributed to an apparent increase in the number of the procedures in the Middle East.

Chinese protest corruption in case of girl’s death
Images of riots in China’s southwestern Guizhou province showed cars burning and cell-phone cameras snapping, as protesters responded with violence to evidence of police corruption. Following the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl by an individual with government connections, police called the death a suicide and brutally killed the girl’s uncle, who pressed for justice. Chinese government officials deployed paramilitary soldiers and riot police after 10,000 individuals took to the streets.

Leaders call for funds for women at Glasgow summit
Some participants at the 8th Civicus World Assembly in Scotland say not enough money is going to aid women in the developing world as outlined under the United Nation’s eight Millennium Development Goals. Activists stress that worldwide gender equality is an integral part of the program’s success.

ZIMBABWE: AIDS organisations still grounded
As Zimbabwe’s political crisis deepens ahead of the presidential run-off election on Friday 27 June, and the status of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) remains uncertain, the situation for HIV-positive Zimbabweans is more precarious than ever.

Today marks the start to the Junior 8 Summit, which will be held in Chitose City, Hokkaido, Japan, from 2-9 July. The J8 is a youth event run parallel to the annual Group of 8 Summit of world leaders. The J8 takes place every year and allows young people from around the world the opportunity to meet share their ideas, concerns and recommendations on how we can work to solve pressing global issues which are set before the G8.

At the J8 Summit, a team of young people represents each of the G8 countries, which include; Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition another delegation of young people will represent the non-G8 countries, by providing one participant from each region of the world.

The J8 is an amazing opportunity for young people around the world to get involved in the decisions of our global world for which they will soon inherent responsibility for. The summit is also an opportunity for world leaders to hear the voices of youth, and see the power for which young people have for change. The participants in the J8 are to serve as representative of youth around the world, but are also able to share their own ideas.

The G8 leaders will gather in Japan next week, as the Group of Eight summit takes place on July 7-9 in the Japanese town of Toyako. On this years G8 agenda climate change tops the list as a UN-backed deadline approaches for a new global treaty. Also priorities on the G8 agenda are poverty and HIV/AIDS, as while the progress has been seen in some areas in recent years, such as providing life saving medications and increasing children’s access to schools, the increasing of promised funds to fight extreme poverty have been missed. Therefore as the world looks at the current food prices and shortages, the need for action has become even more pressing.

Kids to learn more about the J 8 Summit and how you can send a message to world leaders click here, and find your countries J8 page. Have your say and see what others are saying by going to UNICEF’s Voices of Youth forum, young people just like this:

“My country comprises of intelligent youths who when given the right environment and state of mind, the sky is just the beginning, so to improve my country, i would invest in education, improving the state of mind of the average Nigerian child and positioning him to influence the world.”

More on the issues at this years G8 Summit:

Confronting Climate Change: A Strategy for U.S. Foreign Policy
A new Independent Task Force report says U.S. climate policy must focus on the largest economies and emitters.

News Release: U.S. must overhaul climate change strategy, says CFR Task Force report.

Backgrounder: Economic Challenges for Climate Change Policy

Ban urges G8 to move forward with Africa aid promises
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the G8 countries Monday to follow through with pledges to increase aid to Africa $25 billion. Reports surfaced that some countries might backtrack on the promises. “When it comes to climate change…and the global food crisis, these campaigns should be led by the industrialized countries — they have the capacity, they have the resources, and I hope the leadership demonstrates their political will,” Ban said ahead of a G8 summit next week.

I wanted to bring your attention to IRIN’s  latest film, Love, Positively, which follows the lives of four young adults living in Ugandan capital, Kampala who were infected at birth, and explores the challenges they face growing up with HIV and the courage they need to overcome it.  To see this and other IRIN film click here.

Worldwide more than two million children and adolescents are living with HIV. Close to 90% of pediatric infections occur in sub-Saharan Africa.  Read More Here

On July 6 at 8 and 11 PM ET on CNN, the US Fund for UNICEF will air, “The Survival Project: One Child at a Time”. UNICEF is encouraging supporters to not only to watch the broadcast, but to host a viewing party to discuss these important issues of child survival. UNICEF has developed a viewing party guide to help you to easily host a party. The first 100 parties registered will receive a packet of materials including UNICEF signs and buttons. Register your party today!

The broadcast will be hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief Medical Correspondent for CNN, who will highlighting progress and challenges in child survival. In the broadcast CNN will explore why 26,000 children die every day from preventable causes, and what UNICEF doing to save young lives. The show will look at four areas where UNICEF works on-the-ground to save children’s lives:

• Child protection in Iraq
• Water and sanitation in Laos
• HIV/AIDS in Peru
• Child survival interventions in Ethiopia

New polio threat prompts mass vaccination campaign, as seven million children in nine of the 11 provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are being vaccinated against polio, a disease thought to have been eradicated in the vast country. The campaign, which began on 19 June, targets children up to the age of five, the age group worst affected by polio. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis, according to the WHO.

Condom use not catching on among youth, in spite of massive spending on efforts to counter HIV/AIDS, experts warn that many young Thais are still having unsafe sex. “Many people know HIV is transmitted by having sex,” he said. “We also know we should stand up and give our seat to old people on the bus, but we don’t do it,” Sittichok Chaisupasin, a 16-year-old peer educator.

Typhoon Fengshen death toll rises to 224, as it moved out of the Philippines on 23 June towards China, leaving at least 224 dead, hundreds missing and thousands homeless, according to the Philippine National Red Cross and Office of Civil Defence. Heavy rains and winds of up to 195km an hour caused landslides, flash floods and storm surges.

Landmines impede civilians’ return to volatile Arghandab, as dozens of landmines have been discovered in Arghandab District, in the southern province of Kandahar. It is estimated that some 60 people, many of which are children, are killed each month in the country by landmines. Millions of landmines were dumped across Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, killing and wounding over 70,000 people so far, according to the United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (UNMAC). In other news, insecurity, uncertainty stop return of Afghan refugees, from Pakistan. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has repatriated 3.3 million Afghans since 2002, including 120,000 from Pakistan in 2008, but some two million registered Afghan refugees remain in Pakistan. The number of unregistered refugees is unknown.

US accuses LRA of abuses, calls for a quick peaceful solution. “The United States condemns the recent LRA attacks on Sudanese Peoples’ Liberation Army forces at Nabanga, Sudan, and elsewhere, as well as the LRA’s abductions and other abuses of innocent civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Southern Sudan,” said a statement issued on 18 June. Along with four of his commanders Kony is charged by the ICC with carrying out abductions, killings, rape and conscription of Ugandan children as fighters among other war crimes. Some 30,000 children in northern Uganda have been abducted and forcibly inscripttion into the LRA. Government welcomes Kony’s “change of heart” but rules out more talks; “We only hope that he will put his pronouncement into practice. We note, however, that negotiations were concluded and there will not be a re-opening of the negotiations whatsoever,” Capt Chris Magezi, spokesman for the government delegation, said on 23 June.

“They torched our house, they burnt our livestock, I have nothing left and don’t know where to start.”, said 22 year old Precious, a mother of a six-month-old baby (Telegraph).

According to UNICEF the continued violence is damaging Zimbabwe’s children and the grip it has on the countries children fears to only be tightening. Just last week the government run by President Mugabe’s ordered that all international aid groups and NGOs to stop their field work. On June 4th all aid agencies where ordered to stop all work, as they have been accused of working against Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. The blocking of aid comes as the country is preparing for the presidential run-off election on June 27th.

Violence in the country arose after the the March 29th presidential elections, when Robert Mugabe was challenged by Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU-PF), lost the majority in parliament for the first time since the country’s independence in 1980.

Children not spared post-election violence, as children and their families have been displaced from their homes, some 10,000 or more according to UNICEF. Children have been forced out of schools and worse children have been wounded and killed amid the violence and ciaos. Many, especially women and children, have fled to South Africa, such as the woman and child pictured to the right (NY Times).

“The net effect is as many as 500,000 children are now not receiving the health care, HIV/AIDS support, education assistance and food that they require. Many of these children are orphans,” UNICEF said in a statement this past week. As concerns about the children of Zimbabwe’s future rise, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Eastern & Southern Africa, Mr. Per Engebak, said:

“This appalling violence damages children, their potential, and Zimbabwe as a whole. It must stop and it must stop now. All authorities have a legal obligation to protect children; and as a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child there is an international obligation.”

However some 400 AIDS service NGOs allowed to resume operations, nonetheless the news has left many weary and many others wondering if international aid will be allowed in. For now the children of Zimbabwe continue to suffer amid the reigning madness of Mugabe’s hold on the country and the violence that continues to show Zimbabwe’s fragility.


Please see my esteemed colleague Derek Catsam’s posts on the FPA Africa blog and his posts on Zimbabwe for more information on the current situation.

Malaria battle gains mainstream popularity through the “Nothing But Nets” program. The program for which a mere $10 buys an insecticide-treated bed net, has united people and organizations from all walks of life in the battle against malaria and helped make charitable action a wildly popular undertaking, The New York Times reports. Supporters that have rallied to the cause include the United Nations Foundation, the National Basketball Association, the TV show “American Idol” and more than 70,000 individual donors.

A three-day United Nations food conference in Rome ended Thursday, June 5th, with calls for urgent steps to boost food production and halt soaring prices. The global food crisis overshadowed the conference, originally organized to address climate change and biofuels. Conference organizers criticized the U.S. for policies they said contribute to inflating food prices, such as subsidies for wealthy farmers and trade restrictions on food (The New York Times).

HIV rates for women decline in South Africa, as health officials in South Africa have announced that the percentage of pregnant women diagnosed with the HIV virus declined to 28% last year from the 2006 rate of 29.2%. The overall rate for women aged 25-29 infected with HIV was 37.9%, down from 38.7% in 2006. South Africa still has the highest number of AIDS victims in the world at 5.4 million.

Myanmar survivors forced to work for food, Amnesty International alleged Thursday, that the country’s military leadership is forcing cyclone survivors to work for food rations as it continues to evict them from aid shelters and camps. The situation, the group said, is not only violating survivors’ basic rights but is further endangering the lives of tens of thousands.

Child labor in Malawi encouraged by poor record keeping, as legislation compelling birth registrations has been delayed by government infighting and the resultant political turmoil. This failure to More than a million Malawian children are still being used as laborers, according to the latest available estimates. The colonial-era 1904 Birth and Deaths Act, which does not require citizens to be registered at birth, nor deaths to be reported to the authorities, is still in force. Consequently, even though Malawi is a signatory to numerous conventions against child labor, including the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, the 1973 International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 138 (setting a minimum working age of 18), and the 1999 ILO Convention 182 (outlawing child labor), child protection officers cannot verify the ages of people suspected of being employed as child laborers.

Recent reports in Kenya of a Boy’s suicide reveals gaps in HIV education, the boy was in secondary school when he received his fateful results which was accompanied by no counseling. Soon after his results where received to committed suicide by ingesting lethal amounts of pesticide. The boys death which occurred last month has sparked grave concern over the gap in HIV/AIDS education in schools;

“Serious awareness-raising and counseling of students on HIV is non-existent in schools here; the little information they have is either gathered from public meetings, dramas or media. The results sheet was a death sentence passed to him; he was not counseled or offered words of hope, hence his belief that testing positive was the end of life,” “It is possible he also feared isolation by the community.” said one of the boy’s teachers, who preferred not to be named.

The boys death in Kenya was obviously trajic and highly preventable, but it leaves one to question how many other young people are committing suicide out of misinformation and fear of a life living with HIV/AIDS?  Education is a huge gap in many countries, especially in rural areas, and this case only highlights the urgent need to see that education and awareness programs are put into place in both schools and communities across Africa.

The AIDS pandemic effects not only those who sub-come to the deadly disease, but to both their families and communities. Villages have been stripped of generations, families have fallen apart, and children have been orphaned in extraordinary numbers. The long reaching effects of HIV/AIDS cannot be ignored, and nor can the children for which it has left behind.

• Over 15 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 12 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic.

• Experts believe that millions more orphans remain unaccounted for in India, China and Russia.

• By 2010, the number of AIDS orphans worldwide is expected to reach at least 20 million.

Children are not only left traumatized by the death of one or both of their parents, but also remain heavily stigmatized by the disease which has led many children to be turned out to the streets and left many children in poverty.

World AIDS Orphans Day has surprisingly has its roots on Wall Street, as it began with a demonstration on Wall Street in 2002, as activists carried signs that read: “What is the value of an orphan on the New York stock exchange?” The fight six years later has hardly changed, and the face of the largest victims to the pandemic remain the same. Children who are orphaned by AIDS are some of the worlds most vulnerable children, often born into struggle, all raised with the stigma and the fear of the disease. Each child left to fight for both the present and the future, disadvantaged and left behind they are a generation of instability that affects the entire global nation;

“There are many, many awful problems in this world today, but our first task is to raise the next generation in a way that they can become productive citizens and not become child soldiers or terrorists or drug dealers or prostitutes or whatever. All the things we’re seeing,”says Albina du Boisrouvray of the FXB Foundation (VOA).

Therefore today is a grassroots campaign which calls upon donor countries to commit at least 10% of their AIDS funding to that of the needs of AIDS orphans and vulnerable children. Let us look to a future where a generation is not orphaned to disease and left to struggle against poverty, violence and stigma. For more information please see World Aids Orphans.

Talk of HIV/AIDS in South Africa is nothing new, nor is the scale at which it affects children in the country, where the epidemic is one of the worst in the world. According to the, ‘The Demographic Impact of HIV/AIDS in South Africa - National and Provincial Indicators for 2006′ report,estimates that almost half of all deaths, and 71% of deaths among those aged between 15 and 49, are caused by AIDS; leaving half of 15 year old in the country unable to reach the age of 60. According to the National HIV and Syphilis Antenatal Sero-prevalence Survey,conducted by the Department of Health between 2002-2006, there were around 260,000 children below the age of 15 living with HIV.

Sadly children who are infected with the disease are not the only ones who suffer from its sweeping effects. Even more children suffer the loss of their parents and family members from AIDS. UNAIDS estimated that there were 1.2 million South African children orphaned by AIDS in 2005, compared to 780,000 in 2003. This number is only expected to climb in the next few years as the wrath of the virus still has yet to be completely felt. Those orphaned by AIDS are more susceptible to poverty, poor health and a lack of access to education. These children form a lost generation of parent-less children, which then only adds to the strain of the social services and healthcare systems, which is already burdensome under the heavy strain of the ever growing epidemic.

Thus the epidemic in South Africa effects the lives of children in many ways including the obvious, and the not so apparent, such as the impact it has on children’s education. The impact becomes more clear in the UNAIDS 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic, where in Chapter 4: The impact of AIDS on people and societies, it is noted that 21% of teachers in in the country were living with HIV, and thus resulting in less teachers.

As the epidemic continues to soar many have begun to search for alternative therapies and ways of dealing with the disease. In a recent article, Chakras and children, the use of alternative therapy programs, such as energy therapy, where being used to identify and work with vulnerable children. While many debate the validity of such programs, one thing is clear…the children of South Africa need to see a new light of hope at the end of the long and dark tunnel of HIV/AIDS.

For more information on HIV/AIDS in South Africa and it’s reach on children please see Our world
AIDS and childhood in southern Africa, June 2007