According to the UN, spurring the need to impose a region-wide law banning the practice, say experts. A study sponsored by UNIFEM to be released in late October 2008 said circumcisers or girls who undergo circumcision are increasingly crossing borders to perform or undergo the procedure to operate in countries with weaker FGM/C laws, and border police can do little to stop the flow.
In Sierra Leone, Every Pregnancy Is a ‘Chance of Dying’
In Sierra Leone, where even the largest city lacks electricity and running water, the risks associated with pregnancy are grave — and further complicated by dependency on a corps of poorly trained midwives and lack of access to the few trained doctors operating in the nation. Despite the introduction of 54 new clinics throughout the country, 1 in 8 women dies as a result of complications related to pregnancy. See also; A Mother's Final Look at Life: In Impoverished Sierra Leone, Childbirth Carries Deadly Odds
AFGHANISTAN: WFP urges development of new nutritional foods
New kinds of nutritional food, preferably made from local produce, should be developed to reduce malnutrition among young children, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said in Kabul on World Food Day. "Foods which have been fortified for maximum nutritional impact can radically change children's lives," Josette Sheeran, WFP's executive director, said in a statement. WFP has thrown down a challenge to its offices in 80 countries around the world where people are food-insecure, to develop and produce new micronutrient-rich food items to help tackle child malnutrition.
MYANMAR: Every village should have one midwife – UNFPA official
Pregnant women in the hard-to-reach cyclone-hit area are among the most vulnerable of survivors of the category four storm that left 140,000 people either dead or missing and 2.4 million badly affected. “Ideally, every village should have one midwife who is government trained for 18 months but one midwife has to cover five to 10 or more villages on average throughout the country,” Thwe Thwe Win, the UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) national programme officer, told IRIN. “The Ministry of Health seeks to fill the gap with Auxiliary Midwives [volunteers trained for six months],” she explained.
GABON: Negotiations underway to resolve teacher strike
More than 11,000 school teachers are demanding better work conditions and more pay as they continue a nationwide strike in Gabon that started on 6 October, according to Marcel Libama, the secretary general of the National Education Union (SENA). Two out of every five people in Gabon are under the age of 15, according to a government census 10 years ago. Though 96-percent of school-aged children are enrolled in primary school, 30-percent of them must repeat school years, according to 2008 UN data.
LEBANON: Migrant workers' children face marginalisation, racism
Many of the estimated 200,000 migrant domestics living in Lebanon – most of them women from the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia – have no legal status in the country. Their children born in Lebanon thus have no official identity, and no statistics on their numbers exist.
GUINEA-BISSAU-SENEGAL: Child trafficking on the decline say local authorities
Child trafficking from Guinea-Bissau to Senegal is on the decline, partly due to better collaboration among local residents, civil society groups and government, local authorities said. Government officials and aid workers say more and more sectors are on the watch for suspicious movement of children. "Now a whole new set of actors are involved who weren't in the past , border police, governors, even truck-drivers unions, and we receive information from surveillance committees every two to three weeks about what is going on," Karyna Gomes, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson in Bissau, told IRIN.
AFRICA: 'sexually-transmitted grades’ kills quality education
Sexual exploitation in African schools has become so widespread that children have come up with their own terms to refer to sexual relations with their teachers. From "Sexually Transmitted Grades' to "BF', or bordel fatigue, which refers to exhaustion from multiple sexual activities with teachers, this slang hints at the prevalence of exploitation in Africa's learning environments. The lexis of abuse was discovered during research for Plan International's (PI) latest report, "Learn Without Fear,' part of the organisation's global campaign to end violence in schools.