United Nations officials, government leaders and education experts are gathering in Kathmandu, Nepal, June 11 for the start of a two-day conference examining how to improve gender equality in schools across the Asia-Pacific region. The meeting has been set up by the Global Advisory Committee of the UN Girls Education Initiative (UNGEI) to measure the progress so far to boost girls’ access to schooling, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).
UN crisis officials are working with local authorities in Belize to coordinate relief efforts in the wake of flooding across the Central American country caused by the first storm of the annual Atlantic hurricane season. Staff from the UN Development Program (UNDP), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) have been providing logistical and technical support over the past week to authorities, according to a UNDP news release issued June 9. (UN News Service)
Canada is to apologize for forcing more than 100,000 aboriginal children to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools aimed at assimilating them. Prime Minister Stephen Harper will make the apology in parliament in Ottawa, in front of hundreds of ex-schoolchildren. The schools operated from the late 19th Century until the 1990s, although most of them shut in the 1970s. Accounts of physical and sexual abuse at the institutions, known as residential schools, have also emerged. The churches that ran the schools apologized in the 1980s and 1990s. (BBC)
An investigation by the Spanish Ombudsman has revealed serious shortcomings in two Canary Islands emergency care centers housing up to 200 unaccompanied migrant children, Human Rights Watch said June 9. The Spanish Ombudsman's office launched an independent investigation in September 2007, triggered by the HRW “Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain's Failure to Protect the Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Canary Islands”. This report documents serious human rights violations against several hundred unaccompanied migrant children housed in emergency care centers on the islands. The conclusions of the Ombudsman's investigation have now been made public. (HRW)
Families in southern Ethiopia are relying on government shipments of food and water due to a severe drought that has disrupted area crops. Officials say a spike in global food prices is exacerbating the situation, leaving up to 4.5 million Ethiopians in need of assistance. IRINNews.org
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is spearheading a family planning campaign to help solve the country's food insecurity. Since the early 1980s, the country's population has nearly doubled, with many Egyptians looking to children as a source of financial well-being. The Washington Post
