PAKISTAN: Wanted: A Revolution For Girls

Sixteen-year-old Noor Bano believes nothing short of a revolution will convince the men in Malangabad – her remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh province, some 460 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi – to treat women as equals.

U.S. Move Hurts More Than UNESCO

The United States’ decision to cut funding for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation will hurt the specialised agency’s work, officials here say.

INDIA: Massive Digital Divide in the Land of IT

In a remote Indian village in the Western state of Maharashtra, a fourth-grader named Suraj Balu Zore proudly told IPS that he can now effortlessly operate a laptop computer.

Q&A: “Food Is Not a Business, But a Human Right”

Rural women and small-scale producers play a key role in providing food security and food sovereignty, but many large multinational corporations threaten that progress by undermining populations' independence when it comes to food.

EDUCATION: Bangladeshi Humanitarian Wins Half-Million Prize

A Bangladeshi humanitarian with a British knighthood - and head of one of the world's largest non-governmental organisations (NGOs) promoting the cause of education - walked way with half a million dollars in prize money and a gold medal at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in the Qatari capital of Doha.

ZIMBABWE: Forcing Parents to Top Up Teachers’ Salaries Cannot Continue

As concerns deepen about the quality of education in Zimbabwe, parents can expect an indefinite extension of subsidising teacher salaries as the cash- strapped government struggles to meet the bloated civil service wage bill.

Q&A: Doha Summit to Boost Education on World’s Political Agenda

As digital technology begins to spread across classrooms the world over, the United Nations says the next generation of children will be educated far differently from their counterparts in the past.

UNESCO Study Reveals Widening Secondary Education Gap

Arguing that an educated population is a country's greatest wealth, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) says there is no escape from poverty without a vast expansion of secondary education worldwide.

Qatar Launches New Global Award to Promote Education

The internationally-renowned Nobel Prizes have been awarded annually for superlative achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace.

INDIA: Rampant Child Labour Goes Unaddressed In Kashmir

Fourteen-year-old Shafat Ahmad works as a domestic helper in the house of a Srinagar-based government employee in Kashmir. His younger sister embroiders shawls in an unregistered textile venture in her native village of Beeru.

New Methods Aim to Reduce Child Soldier Recruitment

In the last decade, more than two million children have died as a result of armed conflicts and over one million have been orphaned or separated from their families. Yet for children affected by wars, these costs are only a few of the high price children pay, says the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF).

CUBA: Women’s Department Draws Attention to Inequality

Continuing its mission to promote gender studies and use academia to demonstrate the inequalities between women and men in Cuba, the Women’s Studies Department is celebrating 20 years of work with new challenges in terms of researching and drawing attention to the disadvantages faced by the female population.

ARGENTINA: Illiteracy on the Way Out

Efforts by the government and thousands of volunteers in Argentina have succeeded in slashing the illiteracy rate to just 1.9 percent, with a goal to eliminate it completely within the next four years.

Non-Traditional Teaching Promoted for Girls

Making some simple, basic changes in education policy can result in many more girls attending school, experts said at a meeting here this week on Gender Equality in Education.

Afghan Women’s Rights ‘Under Threat’

Women's rights in Afghanistan are once again under threat after 10 years of progress, two leading British aid agencies have said.

FILM: Former Criminals Turn to Preventing Crime

With 432 murders reported last year, Chicago's homicide rate is over 50 percent higher than that of New York City or Los Angeles, according to the 2010 crime report of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

ENVIRONMENT: Youth Share Best Practices at Tunza

Participants at the ‘Tunza International Children and Youth Conference’ underway in this Indonesian city shared best practices and ideas with fellow delegates on Wednesday, hoping they would get replicated.

How to Nurse the Unemployment Epidemic

At a meeting in the suburb of Carthage, just outside of Tunis on Nov. 18, 2008, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn applauded the economic efforts of the now deposed Tunisian dictator Abidine Ben Ali, calling his policies "sound, the best model for emerging countries".

Tapping Boys in the Struggle for Girls’ Equal Rights

Brothers, husbands, boyfriends and fathers are key actors in the creation of a world where girls enjoy the same rights as boys, and will themselves benefit from greater gender equality, stresses a new report from Plan International released Thursday.

Adding Up the Cost of Education in Sierra Leone

A formal strike of teachers has been averted and pupils in Sierra Leone returned to school on Tuesday, almost a week after the term was meant to officially start.

SWAZILAND: No Fees No School

The future education of Swazi children remains uncertain, as public schools across the country have not reopened for the new term because government has not been able to pay for their upkeep.