The report presents a mixed picture. Over the past 25 years, there have been notable improvements in child well-being in the group of countries examined in this report: steady decline in child mortality, overall reduction in adolescent suicide and increase in school completion rates. But the last five years have …
ENVIRONMENTAL education is a major task before this country and future generations have to be prepared to face the extraordinary task of meeting their needs from a degrading environment. Given the growing numbers of people and the desire for a better standard of living, our children will have to get …
HEAVY metal music buffs who are compulsive hand-bangers need beware because jerking the head to the beat could cause severe injury to their necks (New Scientist, Vol 139, No 1887). Marilyn Kassirer, a neurologist at the Boston University School of Medicine, studied 11 girls and six boys who admitted to …
SUB-SAHARAN Africa's debts have increased three-fold since 1980 and the only prospect is that the arrears will mount as just half the scheduled payments are being met. Solutions being explored range from implementing the so-called Trinidad terms to creating a UN Economic Security Council (ESC), whose 11 permanent members would …
A PAKISTANI student has single-handedly started a plantation drive in Karachi. Imran Sultan has planted nearly 70 neem saplings in the past five months in the Karachi Administration Employees' Housing Society complex, and spending PRs 15,000 (Give Indian equivalent) on pits, earth, fertiliser and the wages of a part-time gardener, …
Centre of Concern for Child Labour 247, Akashdarshan Apartments Mayur Vihar-I New Delhi 110 091 Ph: 2252298 Bandhua Mukti Morcha 7, Jantar Mantar Road New Delhi 110 001 Ph: 3329043 Nanban Obula Padithurai Manuchalai Road Madurai 625 009 Institute for Social Education and Development Block No 41/3, 14th Lane, Indira …
CHILDREN comprise six per cent of India's total organised work force; they also contribute an average 23 per cent of a household's domestic savings. Yet, exploitation of children as a social problem has only recently begun to agitate the international conscience. Germany and USA have now refused to import items, …
SOCIOECONOMIC factors greatly influence pregnancy rates among teenagers, according to a 11-year study by Trevor Smith published in the British Medical Journal. The study, based in Tayside, Scotland, found the pregnancy rate in girls below 16 years was three times as high in the most deprived areas as in the …
IN MANIPUR, drinking is more than being merely dangerous to one's health. It can be utterly embarrassing because a man caught drinking there is likely to be stripped, have his face blackened, be paraded seated on a donkey and then handed over to the police for prosecution. Nupi Lan, the …
THE DRIVE against liquor in Kaithal district in Haryana reached its most ludicrous in March this year when the Kamoda village panchayat resolved to reopen the village's liquor vend in the village. Says panchayat member Baju Ram, "The decision was taken because liquor was still easily available and there was …
CHADUVU Velugu (Light of Knowledge), an adult literacy primer in Andhra Pradesh, contains a lesson entitled Adavallu Ekamaithe (If Women Unite). The lesson depicts the benefits of literacy and tells the story of how the Dubagunta women won their battle against alcoholism. Adavallu Ekamaithe tells how the men of Dubagunta …
AS HEAD of the President's task force on national health-care reform in USA, Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, has her job cut out for her. A majority of Americans want quality health care at a lower cost, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, and they …
DID YOU know the total UN budget for 1992 was just US $5.2 billion? That's less than the cost of two Stealth bombers, but still enough to pay for all the UN programmes to care for children, feed the hungry, promote development and preserve the peace. A 11-member group convened …
A CONTROVERSY is raging over the chir (Pinus roxburghill trees that are being planted oin Himalayan slopes because it grows quickly in virtually ravaged soils, though local residents complain the chirs absorb groundwater and discourage undergrowth. Chir trees are found in abundance from Pakistan to Arunachal Pradesh and its logs …
THE PEOPLE'S level of education is considered an index of development and a nation's potential for growth. The concept of education needs to be defined in the context of its ability to meet the challenge of social change. The growing concern over the erosion of values and increasing cynicism in …
IN DAYS long gone, the bearer of bad tidings was usually put to death unceremoniously. In today's more civilised times, we in the Third World prefer to vilify such messengers as biased agents of neo-imperialists, who never hesitate to point out the mote in our eyes while remaining blissfully oblivious …
"Hum yahan bahut khush hain. Raat mein restaurant mein hi padhai ki class hoti hain (I am very happy here. Night literacy classes are held at the restaurant itselt)," says 17-year-old Bhagwan Singh. For two years now, Bhagwan has worked at Butterflies, a restaurant in the Inter-State Bus Terminus run …
IN THE latest round of the unending debate on the effects of television on children, a British report states middle-class primary school beginners are unable. to read because they cannot speak properly. This, says Jackie Miller of the Professional Association of Teachers, is because parents do not talk much with …
THIRTEEN-year-old Seena is a rag-picker in Bangalore who used to sleep on the roadside and eat at pavement tea-stalls, constantly evading cops who pick up street-children like him and take them to a beggars' colony on the fringes of the city. But now, Seena and others like him need not …
FOR MORE than a decade now, The State of the World"s Children, published annually by UNICEF, has attempted to draw public attention to issues which, though vital to the well-being of the world"s children, rarely get included in the economic and political priorities of governments. Like its predecessors, The State …
A UNICEF report, The State of the World's Children 1993, which has been adopted by 150 countries including India, says US$ 25 billion is the annual cost of ending malnutrition, preventable diseases and illiteracy for all the world's. children. To put the figure in perspective, the report says "the amount …
