Author: Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Despite laws banning child marriage in South Asia, deep-rooted social acceptance of the practice and a failure by authorities to crack down and punish perpetrators has led a culture of impunity in the region, the Center for Reproductive Rights said on Friday.

According to a new report by the New York-based charity, 25,000 children worldwide, most of whom are girls under the age of 18, are married every day - with the South Asia region accounting for almost half of all child marriages.

Two years before reaching the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, 40 percent of of women in the Asia-Pacific region are still experiencing violence, insecurity and poor quality of life. This is higher than the global average of 35 percent and undermining the objectives of sustainable development.

30 October 2013 – A United Nations report released today spotlights the high rates of teenage pregnancies in developing countries – 7.3 million every year – and calls on Governments to help girls achieve their full potential through education and adequate health services. 

By Elizabeth Whitman | September 20, 2013

It's the second day of school, and the excitement is palpable. The girls in School No. Three in Za'atari—the main Syrian refugee camp in Jordan—are begging to know when the books will arrive. They don't have much longer to wait. A pickup truck stacked high with bright blue backpacks filled with books rolls in. Young men in neon yellow vests begin pulling the bags out of the truck bed and carrying them to classrooms.

In one class of eighth graders, one girl is disappointed. "These have been written in," she notes, holding up one of her books with blue ink scrawled across part of a page. Others do not seem to mind that the books have had previous lives. They eagerly unzip their new bags, spreading Arabic, English, science and math textbooks across their desks.

By Pi James and Taleen Vartan

Experiencing violence of any kind, early in life, can have a profound impact. A consortium launched on 20 September seeks to drive progress collectively to sustained peace through early childhood development programmes. 

Save the Children says conflict's restriction on movement and huge inflation is causing severe food shortages

Mark Tran
The Guardian, Monday 23 September 2013

Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children Ms. Marta Santos Pais joined a Global Youth Summit on the use of new technologies, in which more than 700 youth leaders from different parts of the world and over 3000 online participants took part. Held from 9 to 11 September, 2013, the Summit was convened by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), and hosted in San Jose by the Government of Costa Rica.