For the first time in decades, some officials are openly calling for Chinese to have more than one child. Shanghai city officials worry the rapidly increasing percentage of residents older than 60, combined with low birth rates, will tax the country’s ability to support its aging population.
Millions of Afghan children forced to work
Millions of Afghan children have been forced into the workforce through a combination of prolonged conflict, grinding poverty and a lack of education, Afghan and United Nations officials say. More than 1 million are the main breadwinners for their families, and in most cases, the working children sacrifice their education to contribute to the family income.
UNICEF uses text messages to spread the word about polio in Zambia
UNICEF has partnered with Zambian health officials and telecommunications companies to text millions of parents in support of a polio immunization drive. The texts encourage parents to bring in their children for free polio vaccines.
Israel cuts 1948 ‘catastrophe’ from Arabic texts
School-age Israeli Arabs no longer will read about the 1948 founding of Israel called “al-naqba,” or “catastrophe,” in officially sanctioned textbooks. Education Minister Gideon Saar of the right-wing Likud party announced the move, saying, “No other country in the world, in its official curriculum, would treat the fact of its founding as a catastrophe.” One Israeli Arab lawmaker, Hana Sweid, said the textbook cut was a “major attack” on Palestinian Arab memory and identity.
Kenya: Doctors Asked to Stop Female Cut Operations
Traditionally performed by midwives and religious leaders, FGM is increasingly being done by medical professionals. This has been dubbed the “medicalisation of FGM”. In a meeting that started in Nairobi which will end on Wednesday, UN officials, medical professionals and representatives from the ministry of Public Health and Sanitation are discussing how to end this trend.
Global Fund concerned about funding targets
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria likely will fall short in its efforts to find $30 billion in funding next year from donors besieged by the ongoing global recession, the Fund’s Executive Director Michel Kazatchkine says.
Urban poor and hungry burgeoning unnoticed
The number of poor and food-insecure people in developing countries is increasing more quickly in urban areas than in rural areas, and could be dropping off the policy radar, says new research by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). “Poverty is still viewed by many as a rural problem, as both governments and donors continue to allocate resources to rural development in order to reverse the bias of urban policies of the 1970s and 1980s,” Shahla Shapouri and Stacey Rosen, researchers in the department’s Economic Research Services, write in the USDA’s Food Security Assessment 2008-09.
