Their Missing Daughters

It is as if they have given up hope of ever seeing their girls again. They are an Adivasi family from a remote village in Assam state in India, nestled in the Himalayan foothills. The picturesque surroundings belie the hollowness they feel within.

Missing Christian Girls Leave Trail of Tears

When a young Christian girl goes missing in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, her family will call on a certain Muslim sheikh in the nearby town of El-Ameriya.

Afghan Girls Give More Than Their Hands in Marriage

In Afghanistan, the maternal mortality rate is on the rise; hospitals are filling up with anaemic women and girls; and in over 200 districts, high schools are devoid of even a single female pupil. These issues are not unrelated - they are all products of a grave social problem in this country of 35 million people: early child marriages.

Girls Fight to Stay in School

Balancing her school bag on one shoulder and holding her three-year-old son by the hand, Farida Haque (19) ignores her in-laws’ complaints and her husband’s frown as she heads each morning for the tiny school in her remote village of Allah Bachayo, located in the Thatta district of Pakistan’s Sindh Province.

Parents Worry After Malala Attack

Young schoolgirls seemed undeterred by the attempt to kill Malala Yousafzai, but parents in northern Pakistan are becoming increasingly concerned over their children going to school.

Women Spend 40 Billion Hours Collecting Water

As the weeklong international conference on water concluded Friday, it was left to one of the keynote speakers from the United Nations to focus on a much neglected perspective on water and food security: the role of women.

Rapes of Young Girls in DRC Still Unpunished

A rash of recent rape cases has sparked local criticism of the weakness of the justice system in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where inadequate resources and simple incompetence mean survivors of sexual violence hold little hope of obtaining justice.

Punish Those Carrying Out FGM, Say Côte d’Ivoire Campaigners

Nine women in the northern Côte d'Ivoire town of Katiola have been convicted for carrying out female genital mutilation – the first time that a 1998 law banning FGM has been applied.

In the Pursuit of Education: Burkina Faso’s School for Shepherds

Salou Bandé is proud to stand at the front of the only classroom in the village of Bénnogo, 90 kilometres north of the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, sharing his knowledge with his students. He is part of an initiative to improve education for nomadic children in the West African country.

To Reduce Teen Pregnancies, Start with Educating Girls

Each year, 16 million girls aged 15-19 give birth. 50,000 of them die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. And 95 percent of those births occur in developing countries.

Former Girl Soldiers Trade One Nightmare for Another

"When I was still at school I was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army, along with 139 other girls," says Grace Akallo. "I spent seven months in captivity, but I survived, I escaped and I went back home."