The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has launched the second part of its multi-phase campaign to detect and treat widespread malnutrition in Togolese children. The agency is now targeting dozens of more isolated villages in the Savanes and Kara regions in the north of the West African country and the Maritime region in the far south after earlier reaching bigger population centers, according to a statement released by UNICEF June 15. (UN News Service)
Students and teachers clashed with police in Chile on June 18 to protest an education bill they say doesn't go far enough to bring equal access to schooling for the poor even with a government flush with copper dollars. About a thousand students marched shoulder to shoulder in the nation's capital, confronting police with tear gas and water canon in the upscale Providencia neighborhood. In Valparaiso, the port town where the national Congress is debating the controversial legislation, 10,000 teachers marched in peaceful demonstrations. (Reuters)
Chinese police have detained a retired teacher on subversion charges after she decried the state of many schools buildings that toppled during last month's devastating earthquake, the Information Center for Human Rights said on June 18. The Hong Kong-based human rights group said police in southwest China's Sichuan province detained Zeng Hongling for “inciting subversion” after she wrote essays arguing that corruption made a mockery of school building standards. The more than 70,000 people killed in the May 12 quake included thousands of children crushed in schools, which often collapsed even as nearby buildings stayed upright. (Reuters)
A Dutch court began hearings June 18 about whether survivors of a 1995 massacre of Muslims in Bosnia, Europe's worst mass killing since World War II, can sue the UN for failing to prevent the slaughter. Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Muslims in one week in July 1995, overrunning the Srebrenica enclave declared a UN safe zone. Dutch peacekeepers overwhelmed by the Serbs’ superior force watched helplessly as the male victims were led away from their custody for execution. The Mothers of Srebrenica, survivors of the men and boys killed in 1995, are among those seeking compensation from the UN and the Dutch state in the civil lawsuit. (AP/MSNBC)
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it is scaling up its emergency operation in Iraq to address the basic needs of more than 360,000 vulnerable children inside the strife-torn nation. After five years of conflict, more than 800,000 Iraqi children are unable to go to school and only 40 per cent can access safe water, according to the agency. Through its Immediate Action for Vulnerable Children and Family – or IMPACT program – UNICEF is aiming to assist over 360,000 children this year and ensure they have access to health care and are protected against malnutrition. (UN News Service)
The work of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is no longer going to be only about delivering food, the former “food aid agency” announced in its new strategy for the next three years (2008-2011); it would now bill itself as a “food assistance agency”. Oxfam's Mousseau cautioned that while his agency “welcomed” the new range of objectives and activities, “We think this new plan should not necessarily translate into more activities for WFP but rather better quality and effectiveness of WFP's work. (IRIN)
