LATIN AMERICA: Quality Jobs Urgently Needed for Rising Generation

Programmes to reduce the unemployment rate among young people in Latin America and the Caribbean should be a priority for countries in the region, said experts, trade unionists and government representatives meeting in the Chilean capital.

Q&A: “Child Marriage Is a Form of Violence Against Women”

At the start of this month, the U.S. Senate unanimously adopted the 'International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act'. Women's rights groups are now urging the Congress's lower chamber to pass it before adjourning at the end of the year.

ARGENTINA: New Campaign Calls Dropouts Back to School

Convincing young people who have dropped out of school to resume their studies is no easy feat. Which is why a group of social organisations in Argentina are joining with the government to launch a different kind of campaign to bring young people back into the classroom in 2011.

GUATEMALA: Forgotten Promises Leave Indigenous Peoples Poorer and Hungrier

Nearly three years into President Álvaro Colom's four-year term, Guatemala's indigenous people have seen little improvement in their lives -- and they represent approximately half the country's population.

PHILIPPINES: Cash Grants Get Youngsters Back into School

Give the poor cash and they will spend it on things other than their most basic needs. Or with no thought for their future, let alone their children’s, they just might indulge in wasteful spending. Right?

DR CONGO: Lack of Funds Reverses Vaccination Gains

Health officials' fears that insecurity and a lack of resources could lead to fresh outbreaks of preventable diseases are being proved painfully accurate in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Polio - thought to have been eradicated in DRC five years ago - has made a frightening reappearance in Central Africa.

Zambia Must Fulfill Promises to Children Living With AIDS

Less than one in four Zambian children who should be on life-saving anti-retroviral drugs is receiving them. The country planned to increase the number of children on ARVs from the present 20,000 to 120,000, but inadequate facilities pose a major stumbling block.

Senegal Debates Merits of Ban on Begging

The face of the Senegalese capital has been transformed. The beggars who swarmed along its major arteries, especially in the centre of the city, its biggest markets and independence square are gone.

Promise of Elbow Room for Malawi Students

The announcement that 5,000 new classrooms will be built thanks to a $140 million World Bank loan would come as welcome news at the Chitowo Primary School - if only the children sitting on the floors, perched on doors and in windows, even taking lessons in the dust beneath trees in the yard could hear it.

Vaccines Make Gradual Headway Against Child Pneumonia

It had seemed her kids had the flu or a cold. But when it got worse, she took little Abigail to hospital. It was already too late; Abigail died in her mother's arms.

Toxic Hotspots Require Global Superfund

One of the world's biggest health threats is also one of the least recognised - more than 100 million people who literally breathe and eat toxic pollutants like lead, mercury, chromium every day, according to the first-ever detailed assessment.

Math Doesn’t Add Up to Keep School Doors Open

As donors meet this week to allocate funds for global education, advocates warn that diminished support has forced many poor countries to consider closing schools and sacking teachers.

DEATH PENALTY: Sudan Still Sentencing Minors to Death

Four minors are among nine people who have been sentenced to death for a carjacking in Khour Baskawit in South Darfur. The case has raised fresh concerns over protection for children's rights in Sudan.

RWANDA: Stronger Support for Children Affected by HIV

At Kigali's Kibagabaga Hospital, 30 young people aged between 12 and 18 years old wait in a crowded holding room, waiting for their turn to see the doctor in charge of prescribing antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). They are among 220,000 children affected by AIDS who are benefiting from social and medical assistance from the Rwandan government and its development partners.

SYRIA: Iraqi Kids Struggle on Dangerous Edges

Leila, 17, presses her hijab-clad head against the front door and strains to hear outside. "There's nothing," she says cautiously, turning towards her mother Rawda, the head of the household, in their quiet basement apartment. Along the brocade couch sit her two sisters, Mona, 19, Nadja, 15, and 10-year-old brother Khaled.*

AFRICA: FIFA Moves Against Trafficking of Young Footballers

When he was 15, Maurice Koné dreamed of becoming a great footballer. Adored for his technical skill and eye for goal by fans in Koumassi, a neighbourhood in the south of Abidjan, he dreamed of living the life of a professional overseas.

MEXICO: Altars to Victims of Violence on Day of the Dead

"It's painful to build an altar of offerings to your dead child," Abraham Fraijo, one of the leading activists in a citizens' movement against violence and impunity in Mexico, wrote in his Twitter account while taking part in a series of protests during the celebrations of the Day of the Dead.

Migrant Workers in Mexico Left to Hoe Their Own Row

Every year since 1975, Castro Solano has left his home in the town of Tlapa de Comonfort, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, to work in other parts of the country as a seasonal farm labourer.

Malnourished Children Swell Ranks of World’s Hungry

With the number of hungry people growing to more than a billion last year, the world is "nowhere near" reaching the objectives outlined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to the latest Global Hunger Index (GHI) released Monday.

ARGENTINA: Preterm Infants at Centre of Innovative Campaign

"My name is Maximiliano Muñoz. I'm 23 and I'm studying engineering," says the young man smiling into the camera. The television spot is part of an awareness-raising campaign in Argentina on the rights of people born prematurely.

INDIA: Indian Schools Will Spare the Rod, and the Child

Child rights activists hope that the arrest of the principal of one of India's elite public schools for caning a student and possibly abetting his suicide will serve to put an end to the widespread practice of corporeal punishment in this country's educational institutions.