World News

Heavy flooding and landslides in the Rohingya refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, has left thousands of children and families in an increasingly dire situation with critical infrastructure damaged or destroyed, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday, while scaling up relief efforts to those vulnerable children. “Conditions in the camps and host community are deteriorating rapidly because ...

Food aid is being tripled for troubled Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to respond to what the World Food Programme (WFP) has described as the world’s second largest hunger crisis in the world, after Yemen. In addition to worsening hunger, communities in north-east DRC face a deadly Ebola outbreak and inter-ethnic clashes that claimed at ...

Children were used as suicide bombers in a triple attack in Nigeria on Monday, Unicef has said. Two girls and a boy carried out the bombing outside a video hall in Konduga village in north-eastern Borno State, the UN children’s charity said. Their ages are not yet known. Officials say at least 30 people were killed and 40 injured in ...

Whether a child finishes first or last will no longer be indicated in primary and secondary school report books from next year in Singapore, – a move which Education Minister Ong Ye Kung hopes will show students that “learning is not a competition”. Report books will not just stop showing a student’s position in relation to class or cohort. The information to ...

African leaders on Wednesday underscored the urgent need to fast-track the continent’s regional integration process in order to accelerate Africa’s economic transformation. The call was made at the opening ceremony of the African Development Bank’s 2019 Annual Meetings, in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, with the theme: “Regional Integration for Africa’s Economic Prosperity.” “Apart and divided, Africa is weakened. Together and united, ...

Ugandan officials have passed a law making it an offence to offer money, food or clothing to children living on the streets of the capital, in a controversial bid to stop exploitation and sexual abuse. The Kampala Child Protection Ordinance 2019 also criminalises children loitering in public places, begging or soliciting, vending or hawking, and bans the sale of alcohol ...

One in three African children are stunted and hunger accounts for almost half of all child deaths across the continent, an Addis Ababa-based think tank has warned. In an urgent call for action, a study by the African Child Policy Forum said that nearly 60 million children in Africa do not have enough food despite the continent’s economic growth in ...

The pomp and ceremony of Muhammadu Buhari’s inauguration will not mask the huge challenges the 76-year-old Nigerian president faces during his second term in office – in particular, the booming business of kidnapping for ransom. Even one of the president’s relations – a traditional ruler in Daura in northern Nigeria – is currently being held after he was seized from ...

Pope Francis has made it mandatory for Roman Catholic clergy to report cases of clerical sexual abuse and cover-ups to the Church. In an Apostolic letter, which is set to become Church law, he makes clear that any sexual advance involving the use of power will now be considered abusive. The clarification is being seen as a message to the ...

The UN human rights chief on Monday welcomed Cameroon’s willingness to cooperate over finding workable solutions to “major human rights and humanitarian crises”, caused by months of serious unrest and violence across the west and north of the country. The  announcement came after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, concluded a visit to the West African country. ...