Damascus, Syria | UN | More than 900 children in Syria were killed last year, making 2017 the deadliest year for children in the country’s ongoing conflict, a senior United Nations official told the Geneva-based Human Rights Council on Tuesday, warning that the grim statistics may only be the tip …
Read More »Four million Syrian children have only known war since birth: UNICEF
Damascus, Syria | UNICEF | Half of Syria’s children, that’s four million, have grown up only knowing a life of violence, as the war-battered country enters its eighth year of conflict, the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday. “Every eight-year-old in Syria has been growing up amidst danger, …
Read More »Over 15,000 South Sudan children remain separated from their families: UNICEF
Malakal, South Sudan | UNICEF | The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said 15,000 children remain separated from their families or missing, five years after conflict first broke out in South Sudan. UNICEF said more than four million people have been uprooted by the fighting in the country, the majority of …
Read More »British policeman jailed for raping 13-year-old
London, United Kingdom | AFP | A British police officer was jailed for 25 years on Thursday for 37 offences that included raping a 13-year-old girl in the back seat of his car. Constable Ian Naude told the jury that the sex was consensual and that the girl “seemed to …
Read More »Mukwege saviour to dozens of ‘little sisters’ raped in DRC village
Bukavu, DR Congo | AFP | Lucie was just seven years old when the men took her. She was found the next day, naked and bleeding, on the edge of the vast forested hills of Kahuzi Biega Park, in violence-plagued eastern DR Congo. “The militants entered the family home …
Read More »The battle to save Central African Republic’s starving children
Bangui, Central African Republic | AFP | The line of parents waiting to see doctors stretches back outside the hospital into the dusty courtyard. Mums and dads carrying weak, starving children. Many hanging limply in their arms like half empty sacks of rice. The scene at the paediatric complex in …
Read More »Child marriage costs countries billions in lost earnings: World Bank
Accra, Ghana | AFP | Respect Ruvimbo Topodzi was 15 and walking home from school in her native Zimbabwe when a 22-year-old man asked her out. She turned him down but it was too late. Her father saw them and assumed they were already together. He told her she had …
Read More »Walking, talking and separated: Bangladesh conjoined twins go home
Dhaka, Bangladesh | AFP | Bangladeshi twins conjoined at birth have gone home nearly a year and a half after being separated in the country’s first such successful operation, a doctor said Tuesday. Two-year-old sisters Tofa and Tahura, joined at the spine and at the rectum, underwent a gruelling nine-hour …
Read More »Rotary gives hope to children with Rheumatic Heart Disease
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Up to 150 Ugandan children suffering from Rheumatic Heart Disease have been given a new lease of life thanks to Rotary International. The international service organization has committed a 1 billion Shillings (USD 272,500) grant towards correcting the life threatening complication caused by throat-bacterial infections. …
Read More »Drought, conflict driving Afghans to marry off children: UN
Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | With a devastating drought worsening an already horrendous humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, parents are increasingly compelled to “sell” young daughters into marriage to pay off debt or buy food, the UN said Tuesday. In the drought-hit Herat and Baghdis provinces of Afghanistan, the UN children’s …
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