New report finds little political will to fight child malnutrition

You will often see reports released at the same time that important international meetings take place. With the U.N. General assembly going on now in New York, we can expect to see quite a few of them in the upcoming days. The groups issuing the reports hope to sway some of the discussion at the meeting.

We often link to the reports focusing on development aid, and a very important one was released today. The charities Save the Children and World Vision have issued a report on the rates of child malnutrition across the globe.

According to the report titled "Nutrition Barometer" 36 countries contain 90 percent of the world's malnourished children. The report finds that there is often very little political or legal commitment to improving the health of children in those 36 countries.

The "Nutrition Barometer" can be downloaded from here at the Save The Children website. From Reuters Alert Net, writer Thin Lei Win gives us this summary.

India, despite experiencing strong economic growth in the past few years, shares the bottom rank – countries defined by the study as having low levels of political, legal and financial commitment and little changes to the high rates of malnutrition – with Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen.

These three countries, together with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Niger, Ethiopia and Madagascar, also have the worst nutrition and child survival outcomes, the report said.

While malnutrition itself may not kill children, it is the underlying cause of the deaths of 2.3 million children under five years in 2011 – more than a third of the total, the report said.

Peru, Guatemala and Malawi were applauded for topping the list, with political will and committed resources to fight child malnutrition achieving results.  

Despite the overall positive trend of child survival, including nearly halving the number of children dying before their fifth birthday between 1990 and 2011, “progress in reducing childhood under nutrition has been slow,” the report said.

“Rates of stunting are falling too slowly, and the proportion of wasted children (suffering acute weight loss) actually rose during the last decade,” it added.

“Malnutrition remains a critical problem and it’s a very complex problem,” Michel Anglade, Save the Children’s director for campaigns and advocacy in Asia, told AlertNet.

One in ten Northern Ireland children in poverty

Save the Children says that one in ten children living in Northern Ireland are in relative poverty. That amounts to 40,000 children who are unable to be properly cared for.

From the BBC, we find out more about the statistics from Save the Children.

Head of Save the Children in Northern Ireland Fergus Cooper said that number would rise in 2011.

He said cuts in the executive's spending would begin to take effect and result in job losses.

He suggested that unless the government takes urgent action many more children will fall into severe poverty.

"Families are getting by on less than £7,000 a year for a lone parent with one child and less than £12,500 for a couple with two children," he said.
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The Northern Ireland figures are part of a UK-wide report, Severe Child Poverty: An Update, commissioned by Save the Children from the New Policy Institute, which reveals that 1.6m children across the UK live in the deepest poverty, a figure the charity said is "unacceptably high".

The report also revealed that in Northern Ireland there is a higher likelihood of severe poverty among children in households where no-one is employed. About 29% of children in workless families are affected by severe poverty compared to around 4% of children in families where at least one parent works.

The figures also show that the risk is far higher among children living in lone parent households. And they indicate that the problem is worse in western counties with severe child poverty standing at 12%, compared to 7% in the east and a level of 5% in Belfast.

1 million people could go hungry in Sri Lanka

Save The Children says that Sri Lanka is facing a food crisis caused by the recent flooding and is asking for donations to bring food into the region. 21 percent of the country's rice production has been destroyed by the flooding. 1 million people could be without food unless more is shipped into the flood victims. Save the Children warns that this will not only cause a food shortage but an employment shortage as farmers will not be able to work the fields this season.

From the Guardian, writer Karen McVeigh details the appeal for Sri Lanka.

More than 1 million people in the country are affected, with over half estimated to be facing food shortages and the threat of waterborne disease.

It is an enormous setback for an area that was only just beginning to recover from the decades-long war and the 2004 tsunami which killed 400,000 people and left 2.5 million homeless.

"The average ten-year-old in eastern Sri Lanka has lived through conflict, the tsunami and now risks facing a food crisis in the coming weeks caused by these floods," Gareth Owen, Save the Children's emergencies director, said.

"It is absolutely essential that the world does not wait until these children are starving to act.

"Many families in affected areas are facing a nightmare scenario in which both their food source and their livelihoods have been washed away by the rains. They need help to survive until the next harvest. It may not have been possible to prevent the floods, but we can avoid a food crisis if help is given to families now."

An estimated quarter of a million acres of agricultural land and more than 240,000 livestock are thought to have been lost when the east of the island was hit.

Video: a child's struggle against the Pakistan floods

From this Save the Children video that we found at the Guardian, this story profiles a child who is struggling to help her family survive the Pakistan floods.

Asian Maternal and Child health stats from Save The Children

A new report from Save The Children gives us statistics on child and maternal health in Asia. The report shows an uneven balance of child deaths from urban to rural areas. Urban children have a better chance of survival than those in rural areas.

Save The Children says there is improvement in child survival rates, but they fall short of what is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal for child mortality. MGD number 4 has a goal of cutting child and maternal deaths by two thirds by the year 2015.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Marwaan Macan-Markar gives us country-by-country statistics.

A recent report by Save the Children, entitled ‘A Fair Chance At Life’, shows that Cambodia has seen a 32 percent drop in child mortality figures among the country’s "richest 20 percent", but only an 18 percent reduction in child mortality among the "poorest 20 percent".

Indonesia, the region’s giant where 16 percent of its 225 million people live below the poverty line, has recorded "equitable progress," noted the 37-page report. The poorest 20 percent has seen child mortality figures drop by 29 percent, while the richest 20 percent has witnessed a nine percent decline.

Military-ruled Burma, also known as Myanmar, lags behind all with the worst child mortality figures. It reportedly has 104 children under five years dying for every 1,000 live births. Cambodia, by contrast, has 82 deaths of children under five years of age per 1,000 live births. Laos, the third of this region’s poorest countries, has 75 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Child rights groups have hailed Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam as being well on course to meeting the 2015 targets. The region’s richest country, the city-state of Singapore, has been singled out in a study by ‘The Lancet’, a British medical journal, as leading all countries in the world in child mortality rates, having reduced it by 75 percent since 1990.

The inequity in child mortality rates in countries like Cambodia and the Philippines, which has 32 deaths per 1,000 live births, is "partly an urban-rural divide," said Phillips. "There is no conscious discrimination, but a natural tendency for nurses and doctors to work in cities."

At times, the distance to a health care is a day away, making it costly and time consuming for a family to take a newborn to treat illnesses that lead to child deaths, such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and sepsis.

"If you live more distant from a health centre, you will be reached later unlike those who live closer to health care workers," said Basil Rodriques, regional adviser for your child survival and development at the Asia office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). "The MDGs saw the ‘low hanging fruits’ reached first."

Save The Children says 200,000 Tanzanian children died because of poverty

Save The Children is taking the government of Tanzania to task for not doing more to protect the lives of children. The charity says that 200,000 children have died there in only a decade. Save The Children says that the only reason the children died was because they were poor, and more could have been done to prevent the deaths.

From the UKs Daily Record, writer Lachlan Mackinnon gives us more stats behind the statement while she travels Tanzania.

More than half of the country's population are children and 54 per cent of them are malnourished.

Babies account for 30 per cent of child deaths.

While the overall under-fives mortality rate fell from 157 per 1000 in 1990 to 139 in 2000 and 104 in 2008, Save The Children say deaths among the poorest children have remained stubbornly high.

Ten years ago, world leaders agreed on a set of international targets to cut poverty - including a commitment to slash child deaths by 67 per cent by 2015.

But the east African country of Tanzania - like dozens of others - is off-track, an issue world leaders will discuss at a UN summit in New York later this month.

The Record travelled around Tanzania - home of the Serengeti national park - with Save The Children to inspect attempts to cut child deaths and to listen to kids' and mothers' often-heartbreaking concerns.

At Nyango District Hospital in Lindi, as in the rest of the country, pregnant women and under-fives are treated for free.

But the plight of Zinabu Jafari, 41, suggests the system is fundamentally flawed.

Her newborn twins weigh just 1.9kg and 2.5kg and are expected to die without specialist hospital treatment to increase their size.

Yet, for no apparent reason, Zinabu - whose husband left her when he found out she was having twins - has been told she will be discharged from hospital.

The gran-of-one, whose eldest child is 25 years old, said: "My first five children were born at home because there was no hospital.

"The only problem I had was with my fourth children when I bled for a month about five months into my pregnancy but I was OK after that.

"My seventh child was born seven years ago and I had no idea I was going to have twins this time.

"When the first one came out I was surprised my abdomen was still large and was amazed when another baby came out.

"I don't know what has happened to my husband, just that he is leaving.

"I am not sure about my children's future.

Floods destroy crops in already starving Niger

10 million people were already facing starvation in Chad and Niger. Now, flooding in the region has washed away some of the crops that people hoped to harvest in September. This is on top of a failed harvest last year due to drought that began the crisis.

Save The Children went on record yesterday to say that 400,000 children face starvation in the region and asked for the world to help. Over 2,400 children visited Save The Children clinics last week with severe malnutrition.

From the Independent, writer Andrew Johnson gives us the details about the latest aid appeal.

Aid agencies warned yesterday that 10 million people are already facing severe food shortages, particularly in the landlocked countries of Chad and Niger, after a drought led to the failure of last year's crops. As many as 400,000 children are at risk of dying from starvation in Niger alone, according to Save the Children.

Now unusually heavy rains have washed away this year's crops and killed cattle in a region dependent on subsistence agriculture. Organisations including Oxfam and Save the Children say that the slow international response to the emergency means that only 40 per cent of those affected are receiving food aid. As many as four out of five children require treatment for malnutrition in clinics.

Such is the shortage of international aid that the United Nations World Food Programme has had to scale back its £57m operation to feed eight million people in Niger and instead concentrate its efforts on the most vulnerable – children under two – according to Oxfam.

Save the Children says the increased malnutrition rate could swiftly be followed by an increase in the number of children dying from disease because of floods in Niger caused by heavy rain over the past few weeks. "Stagnant pools of water have been contaminated by animal carcasses and are a breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. This has increased the threat of malaria, respiratory disease and diarrhoea – the biggest killers of young children," the organisation said.

"After six months without proper nutrition, these children have little resistance to disease," said Severine Courtiol, Save the Children's Niger manager. "There is little children can do to avoid coming into contact with this contaminated, disease-ridden floodwater. That's why it's critical we make sure they get enough food so they are strong enough to fight off and recover from sickness."

Robert Bailey, Oxfam's west Africa campaigns manager, said that some food was available in marketplaces in Niger, but was too expensive for ordinary households to afford. As a result, many were reduced to eating leaves and berries.

Heavy rains expected in Pakistan for the rest of the week

From this Save The Children press release, the charitable organization says that heavy rains are expected to fall in Pakistan through the rest of the week. Save The Children is an independent charity that helps to improve the lives of children worldwide.

Pakistan government officials have issued new flood warnings as monsoon rains continue to strand hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country, washing away homes, schools, roads and bridges. The United Nations estimates 980,000 people have lost their homes or been forced to evacuate, and the World Food Programme (WFP) reports 1.8 million people have a critical need for food supplies. Save the Children, in partnership with WFP, will distribute emergency food packages to 6,000 of the most vulnerable families in the remote areas of Swat Valley.

"Many families in these areas ran out of food days ago" said Mohammed Qazilbash, Save the Children's spokesperson in Islamabad. "Our relief teams are walking on foot through areas where roads have been destroyed, in order to reach families who have yet to receive aid."

Save the Children is also providing emergency health services in Swat, treating more than 1,000 people in the last four days.

"There has been a significant increase in complaints of acute respiratory infections, diarrhea and malaria," reported Qazilbash, "And conditions are expected to become worse as the heavy rains continue this week. We are particularly concerned about the young children who are living in temporary shelters without access to clean water."

In other areas, including DI Khan, Buner and Allai, Save the Children's medical teams are treating hundreds of flood victims and providing hygiene kits, plastic shelters, food ration packs and household supplies.

Background

Save the Children has been working with children and families in Pakistan for more than 30 years. The humanitarian agency provided assistance to those affected by Tropical Storm Phet this past June, the conflict in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province in 2009, the flash floods in Peshawar, Kybery Agency and Rajanpur in August and December of 2008, and the massive earthquake in 2005.

For more information on Save the Children's response in Pakistan and for ways to help, please visit our Pakistan Flood Emergency page.

Comment on G-8/G-20 aid disappointment

The disappointment in the conclusions to the G-8 and G-20 meetings have been varied and widespread. Many were hoping that Canadian PM Stephen Harper calls to restore accountability would be heard. They hoped that the leaders world restore their commitments to paying up on the aid they promised before. Instead, other items took up the agenda in the meetings.

From The Vancouver Sun, this commentary from Mark and Craig Kielburger sums up the frustration quite well. Craig and Mark are the co-founders of Save The Children.

Canadians are rightfully angry to hear that $1.2 billion is going missing from public coffers to pay for the G8/G20 summits. Too bad we've heard little about the missing $19.5 billion.

Five years ago, the G8 leaders shook hands with superstars such as Bono and Bob Geldof as they pledged $50 billion in aid to developing countries. At the 2010 deadline, they came up $19.5 billion short. That's the real scandal of the G8.

Maybe the security price-tag and the disruption to daily lives in Toronto would be worthwhile if the G8 and G20 actually delivered on commitments.

(Then again, maybe if the leaders followed through, the protests and security bill would be smaller.)

Unfortunately, it's security that shows up on balance sheets -not broken promises. Lack of accountability means commitments are usually forgotten soon after the Summits close.
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In 1970, world leaders agreed to a pledge tabled by former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson to give 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product to aid. Despite resuscitating that commitment twice in 1992 and 2002, Canada is less than halfway to reaching this goal and has no timeline to see it through.

On top of this, we started the century with the now off-track Millennium Development Goals. Among other issues, it addressed maternal health. Today, the 2005 Gleneagles commitments are also collecting dust.

Gleneagles was ambitious. It cancelled $40 billion in debt. The leaders seemed serious about keeping their promises to increase aid. Unfairly, they raised our hopes before falling back into the perpetual cycle of promise, pose and put aside.

Going into the G8 and G20 Summits, the wealthy nations had delivered only 61 cents on the dollar committed. Think about it. If it was your mortgage, you'd face foreclosure.

But, despite the financial crisis, something started by greed on Wall Street, pushing an estimated 100 million more people in developing nations into hunger, some wealthy nations are actually lobbying to do less. These countries are France and Italy, two nations that have gone drastically off-course on their commitments.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/pledge+comes+short+Surprised/3210277/story.html#ixzz0sAdgTT3B

Reaction to new UK aid commitments

From IRIN, a look at the new international development aid priorities for Britain.

Aid analysts have welcomed some of the international development priorities of Britain’s new coalition government, particularly the commitment to stick to the previous government’s pledge to boost aid spending to 0.7 percent of national income by 2013. But they also worry that the independence and impartiality of aid may be eroded under a new “coherence” push.

With the economy flailing and a budget deficit of US$226 billion (£156 billion at end-May 2010), the new government’s commitment not to cut aid - if met - while making severe cuts elsewhere, “will be a clear sign that in an economic downturn, the UK will not turn its back on the poorest people globally”, Alison Evans, director of the UK Overseas Development Institute, told IRIN.

The new Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, stressed accountability and transparency of aid, alongside “radical steps” to use the private sector more effectively to create wealth, in a 3 June speech to UK aid community representatives.

He has also pushed reducing maternal and child mortality and empowering women, and continued support to education and healthcare, with malaria singled out for $732 million a year until 2015.

However, there was no significant discussion of climate-change funding in developing countries, which had featured strongly in pre-election policy papers and debates.

On accountability, Mitchell said: “Our protected aid budget imposes a double duty to ensure that for every pound of taxpayers’ money we spend, we demonstrate 100 pence of value.”

The government will set up an independent aid watchdog to monitor spending and ensure aid is targeted to projects that deliver results, as well as a UK Aid Transparency Guarantee.

“Independent evaluation of British aid is absolutely crucial,” said Mitchell. “There is something a bit too cosy and self-serving about internal evaluation… What did the money achieve? What change resulted from it? How were lives made better?”

Such evaluations will extend to the Department for International Development’s (DFID) multilateral aid recipients such as the UN and World Bank.

Given the relative lack of scrutiny in the largely unregulated international development sector, “if it [an independent watchdog] improves accountability, it’s a good thing”, Kathleen Chapman, Oxfam’s head of UK government relations, told IRIN.

Accountability to the poor

But the government must balance accountability to UK taxpayers and parliament with accountability to recipients, stressed Karin Christiansen, head of NGO Publish What You Fund, and Save the Children’s development director, Patrick Watt.

“Results should not just be number of babies saved,” said Christiansen. “We need a more realistic conversation about what results of aid are. The best results may be improving the effectiveness of countries at their own tax spending, for instance.”

And transparency goes beyond publishing information on websites, stressed Owen Barder, director of Aidinfo, at an aid effectiveness conference earlier this year. Transparency involves a dialogue with potential beneficiaries about what their and donors’ aid priorities are, and whether aid pledged is actually getting through.

To make aid more effective Mitchell proposes to redirect £100 million of aid from low-priority or poor-performing projects to programmes with a better success rate.

Private sector push

“We are aiming to take a change of approach, a fundamental change that empowers people, that creates and sustains wealth rather than simply redistributing it,” Mitchell said. “…We will champion a trading system that is free, open and fair, rather than one that pursues an isolationist policy and limits market opportunities.”

The push has attracted overall support from aid experts, although Chapman said basic services, such as health and education, were best delivered by a more efficient public sector.

Alongside private sector partners, the coalition stresses the need to bring the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Ministry of Defence and DFID more closely together.

“21st century development is a complex tapestry of trade, investment and enterprise, climate change, economic growth, debt relief, financial services, intellectual property and advancing new technologies,” Mitchell said. Dealing with such issues, particularly in fragile states, requires “pulling together the strands of development, defence and diplomacy…that is why the Prime Minister set up the National Security Council to take a cohesive… approach.”

The National Security Council is a new body that aims to tackle security internally and abroad.

Coherence

The coherence agenda was espoused by the previous government, but UK-based Portland consultants expect more aid under this government to be channelled through the Foreign Office, used to fund the National Security Council, and to support military-humanitarian bodies such as stabilization and reconstruction forces in Afghanistan.

Any new, more “coherent” approach to fragile states such as Afghanistan must not be used as a blueprint for intervention in all failed states, warns Save the Children’s Watt. “The situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo is very different, for instance… Afghanistan cannot end up by default shaping the government’s overall approach to fragile states and conflict-affected countries as security objectives could unduly influence other development interventions.

“We’d be concerned by any long-term trend in reduction of overseas development aid going to DFID,” he continued. “We’ve seen this taken to an extreme in the US where one-third of USAID money goes through the State Department or Pentagon. The [2002] International Development Act, which requires aid to be poverty focused, only applies to DFID aid.”

Oxfam too, has worries. “We’ll push for the government to avoid militarizing aid,” said Chapman. “The top message needs to be that aid is focused on people who most need it.”

Maternal mortality

One area where most agree aid is crucial is to bring down maternal and child mortality rates – a prominent theme for DFID under the new government. The Millennium Development Goal to reduce by three-quarters the number of women dying in childbirth is way off-track, as are many MDGs where discrimination against women and girls is most profound, said the ODI’s Evans.

Prime Minister David Cameron discussed maternal mortality with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on 3 June, before its inclusion in the agenda of the upcoming G8 leaders summit in Canada.

Aid workers hope this is a sign that the aid agenda under Cameron will continue to enjoy the prominent role it had under Gordon Brown, with his office and the Cabinet pushing development issues.

The $1.4 million food giveaway

Save The Children plans on giving away 1.4 million dollars of food in just three hours. The charity will be giving away the food in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 20th. They hope to find people who used to be in the middle class, until the recent recession knocked them down.

From the Charlotte Observer, writer Mark Price describes the effort to round up all the people to receive the food.

So massive is the effort, Feed the Children has asked for help from the Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte and from The Park Ministries, which owns the center formerly known as the Merchandise Mart. Their jobs: Find 3,200 families to receive the food and another 200 volunteers to give it out.

Registration for families runs Tuesday through Thursday, and organizers say their goal is to reach out to people who are new to poverty.

"We're trying to find that demographic of people that might not think they'd normally qualify to receive food," said Salvation Army spokesman Jim Price.

"These could be people who just recently lost jobs, or they still have jobs, but they're struggling month-to-month to meet their obligations," Price said.

The effort is called the Americans Feeding Americans Emergency Caravan, and it will bring eight tractor-trailer loads of food and health products.

Charlotte was chosen because of the impact the recession had on the city's banking industry, said Feed the Children spokesman Tony Sellars. The community's unemployment rate is about 2 percent higher than the national average, and Feed the Children estimates 70,000 people here live in poverty, 16 percent of them children.

UK poverty report from Save The Children

Save The Children UK has released a new study that finds that the numbers of children living in poverty has been rising since 2004. This result is similar to a study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation issued a few months ago.

During the years of economic growth in the UK an additional 260,000 children moved below the poverty line. Save the Children says that their research suggests that child poverty levels have stayed the same during the recession.

From this press release found at the Save The Children UK website, we read this summary of the report's conclusions. The full report is available to download.

According to the research, commissioned from the New Policy Institute, an additional 260,000 children were pushed into severe poverty during the four years of a UK economic boom, between 2004 and 2008. Our research indicates that this number is likely to have stayed the same over the last two years, as the recession has wiped out any progress that government action may have achieved.

This means that 13% of the UK’s children now live in severe.

The recession is likely to have increased severe poverty by a further 100,000 children but rises in tax credits and benefits are expected to have bought the numbers back down to pre-recession figures. But as unemployment continues to climb, there is a real danger that the number of children living in severe poverty could still rise even higher.

England accounts for the biggest increase in severe poverty, with more than 1.5 million children now living in families that earn 50% below the average UK income and missing out on daily essentials such as enough food and clothes. London is home to around one fifth of all children in severe poverty in the UK — over 300,000 children — the biggest proportion of any UK city.

Child labor increases in Cote D'Ivoire

Yesterday we presented a story that had good news about child labor in Asia. Today however a new report from Save The Children presents a different picture for the African country Cote D'Ivoire.

Save The Children says that rising poverty in Cote D'Iviore is forcing more children into labor, sometimes in unsafe, or difficult conditions. The international NGO estimates that one quarter of all children in the country are working.

From IRIN, we read more about the report and the lives of children in Cote D'Ivoire.

Sharply rising poverty is causing exploitative child labour to increase says NGO Save the Children in its report “It’s there it’s difficult: exploitative child labour in Côte d’Ivoire,” launched today.

It is estimated that one quarter of all children work in Côte d’Ivoire and eight out of 10 of them are exploited according to the government. Harmful activities include sex work, cutting down trees, burning fields, climbing trees to collect palm oil, carrying heavy loads, working as unpaid domestics or market vendors far from their families.

With a deteriorating economy and shrinking government services, more of these children end up working, says Save the Children. Country-wide the number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day has risen from 10 percent in 1985 to 49 percent in 2008, according to the World Bank.

Most children forced to sell sex to survive in Abidjan told local NGO Cavoequiva they were brought to the capital by relatives or family friends. Côte d’Ivoire, alongside many West African countries, has a long-standing practice of families sending their children to relatives in towns to be schooled or find work or apprenticeships.

Save the Children’s child protection adviser Mark Canavera told IRIN: “The practice of relatives taking care of children or using children for light, legitimate labour have changed and become more exploitative as poverty increases.”

The report studies child labour practices in 18 Montagnes region in the west and in the Adjamé neighbourhood of Abidjan.

Rural risks

In 18 Montagnes – the country’s primary cocoa-producing area – children have traditionally helped their families in the fields, partly as a means of learning how to farm, says Save the Children.

But with rural poverty increasing and cocoa prices still relatively low, farmers have to produce more to survive and are forcing children to work longer hours, the report says.

In Doutrou village, 50km from Man, capital of 18 Montagnes region, village chief Kucsa Benoila told IRIN: “When we returned to start planting we all had to work twice as hard…even now our cocoa plantations are not yet up and running again.”

Recommendations

Local NGOs have called on international NGOS and the government to set up more care centres to support children forced to live and work on the streets.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Save the Children recently completed a study to identify the strengths and weaknesses in Côte d’Ivoire’s protection infrastructure.

Some existing government services could be extended to working children, the report suggests, such as the accelerated learning programme for children and youths whose schooling was interrupted by conflict.

Building up a wider child protective system involves improving practical services – such as medical help and care centres – economic support, for instance giving micro-credit loans to farmers, and building up the legal system, said Save the Children’s Canavera, who points out that the Ministry of Families must involve other ministries.

Thus far, he said the employment and justice ministries are “showing some interest”.

Video: the story of Savita

The Guardian presents this story from Save The Children about another preventable death of a child in India. Savita died of diarrhea at the age of two.

Numbers of poor children in the UK increases

Save The Children of the U.K. says the amount of poor children in the country is increasing. The charities survey specifically says that 60% of children in Wales have neither parent employed.

From this story at Wales Online, writer Darren Devine tells us more about the survey.

Research by Save the Children shows around 192,000 youngsters across the nation live in poverty.

Save the Children says there’s been a rise in children living in workless homes in some parts of Wales compared with previous years.

Areas where the numbers of children living in workless families have increased are Bridgend, Carmarthenshire, Flintshire, Swansea and Pembrokeshire.

Workless families have to make tough choices between food, heating and transport costs.

Children from poorer families often experience ill health and delayed development, suffer accidents and become pregnant as teenagers. They also miss out on school trips, out-of-hours activities and extra tuition.

Eleri Thomas, head of Save the Children in Wales, said access to child care and well-paid jobs remain two of the most significant barriers for parents trying to overcome poverty.

She said: “Large inequalities remain in health and in educational attainment, where the narrowing of the gap between poor children and their peers has stalled and we need to address this, both on a national and local government level.

“Families should be supported into work, but they need good quality affordable child care and we need to make sure that employment is paying decent wages and offers long-term job security.”

Donating money to wear street clothes

Students from an UK school got to shed their uniforms for a day, but it came at a price. Students had to donate to come into school in any street clothes, the money went to a charity that operates a orphanage in South Kenya.

From the Shield Gazette, writer Angela Reed explains the fundraiser.

Pupils at St Aloysius RC Infants in Hebburn held a non-uniform day and raised £270 for The Akhonya Trust, a Gateshead-based charity that supports a rural area in western Kenya.

It runs a home for 130 children orphaned by HIV/Aids and pays for corrective surgery, such as club feet, cleft palate and bowed legs.

It also supports an organisation called SAIPEH (Support Activities in Poverty Eradication and Health), which has just set up a feeding centre in a small village called Manyasa.

The money raised by the school allowed the Trust to buy a pure-bred cow and a goat for the feeding centre, which provides 30 orphans with two basic meals a day.

The goat has been named Aaron, after five-year-old pupil Aaron McDowell, who donated all his savings.

The children were asked to come up with a name for the cow and agreed on Milky.

Zimbabwean girls as young as 12 turning to prostitution for food

Save The Children says that young girls in Zimbabwe are turning to prostitution for food. The girls as young as 12 are selling their bodies for as little as a few cookies.

The charity fears that human traffickers could bring the desperate children to South Africa for next year's World Cup. The children would be used to satisfy the demands of travelers from around the globe who will come to the country for the football event.

From the BBC, reporter Mike Thomson talked to a head teacher of a school who has seen the problem firsthand.

Unemployment in Zimbabwe is thought to top 90% and many cannot afford to pay for food, medical care or school fees.

The deputy head teacher of a large school with 1,500 pupils east of Victoria Falls told the BBC that hundreds of her female students are now selling their bodies for whatever they can get.

"It could be books, it could be biscuits, chips, some even just to be given a hug."

Throughout my conversation with the deputy head, two small teenage girls in threadbare school uniforms sat watching from a brick wall by the playground. Both are orphans.

The older one, who is 14, said she knows many girls here who have become prostitutes.

"I don't want to do that but life is so difficult, so very difficult. Both my parents are dead and I rarely see my two sisters. Recently I stood by the river and I thought about throwing myself in but I didn't. I don't know why."

Safety fears force last major British charity to quit Iraq

from The Guardian

Sara Gaines

The last major British charity working in Iraq is pulling out today as the worsening security situation makes it impossible to safeguard staff.

Save the Children UK has announced that - after 15 years in the country - it is to shut its office because it can no longer reach the Iraqi children it wants to help.

"It was not an easy decision but it became more and more difficult for staff to get around all parts of the country," said Paul Roberts, the charity's Iraq programme director.

"It's been hard to keep track of local partners' day to day work and their safety has been jeopardised. In practical terms it just became impossible."

Mr Roberts is based in Jordan along with the charity's other international staff but has made monthly trips to Iraq to try to monitor work with Save the Children's local partners. He said the security situation was getting worse, which made the decision to quit all the harder.

"The main focus in Iraq is around conflict and 'terrorism' but sadly that masks a huge humanitarian issue that's arising. Children can't go to school, there are problems accessing clean water..."

Children in Iraq form nearly 50% of the population and around 8% are estimated to suffer from acute malnutrition. Although their needs are desperate, Mr Roberts said the charity was unable to ensure help reached them or to maintain organisational standards.

The charity repaired and re-equipped schools and hospitals in the aftermath of the war and successfully lobbied for children's rights to be included in the new Iraqi constitution. Mr Roberts said they were proud of that legacy and would continue to support work by local partners to form a Iraq-wide children's rights network.

Many other British charities have already pulled out of the country, though some smaller groups remain. Three years ago Oxfam stopped direct aid and switched to arms-length work through local partners in Iraq. Care International closed its operations there in 2005 after the abduction and murder of Margaret Hassan, its director in Iraq.

The Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross is still active in the country, providing medical aid and visiting detainees to check on their welfare.