RIGHTS: For Tens of Thousands, A Short and Brutal Life

"Child soldiers are ideal because they don't complain, they don't expect to be paid, and if you tell them to kill, they kill," a senior official in the National Army of Chad reportedly told a Human Rights Watch researcher.

ARGENTINA: Multimedia Youngsters not Isolated

Many parents in Argentina, like their counterparts in developed countries, worry that their teenage children spend too much time on their computers and cell-phones, with little real-life interaction with others, and devoting hardly any time to reading. But a new study shows that such beliefs are partly based on preconceived notions that do not stand up to scrutiny.

DEVELOPMENT: UN Sees Major Successes in Child Survival

The developing world is making significant progress in child survival despite the fact that nearly 2.2 billion children worldwide continue to battle poverty, sexual abuse, forced military conscription, labour exploitation and HIV/AIDS.

EUROPE: Call to Link Trade With Children’s Rights

The European Union has been urged to make its trading relationships with foreign countries conditional on reducing and eventually eradicating child labour.

LATIN AMERICA: Food Price Inflation Threatens Children

Child malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean will be aggravated by global food shortages, even though the region produces much more food than it consumes, say experts and officials.

MIDEAST: Siege Hits Palestinians Before They Are Born

The Israeli siege of Gaza that has restricted access to food, water and medicine is now beginning to hit unborn children and newborn babies.

RIGHTS-US: School Recruiting Could Violate Int’l Protocol

Pressed by the demands of the "global war on terrorism", the United States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.

Q&A: Child Soldiering Driven by “Unequal Power Equation”

The growing phenomenon of child soldiers - long prevalent in African countries such as Uganda, Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo - is also taking root in Asia, specifically in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma (Myanmar) and the Philippines.

BURMA: Foreigners, Cameras Banned in Cyclone-Hit Areas

Images of the dead keep trickling out of Burma. The most moving are those of children who died when Cyclone Nargis tore through their world in the populous Irrawaddy delta.

HEALTH-KENYA: Months After Dump Scare, Problems Persist

Every day, the Dandora dumpsite in the eastern part of Nairobi receives 2,000 tonnes of rubbish - about half of the waste generated daily by the capital's 4.5 million people. The 12-hectare site is a low mountain of smouldering trash. Vultures and marabou storks circle overhead in anticipation of a meal.

Q&A: Russian Children Learn Market Ways

After the political changes that brought in capitalism, education in Russia emerged from its old centralised style. The changes in education now have been no less radical than the political changes.

LATIN AMERICA: South-South Cooperation to Fight Child Malnutrition

Cooperation between Latin American countries, which is cheap, efficient and horizontal, could fast-track the fight against child malnutrition, Nils Kastberg, the regional director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said at a conference held in the Chilean capital.

RELIGION: Ethics – The Best Weapon Against Domestic Violence

Domestic violence, which is widespread in Latin America as in the rest of the world, makes it imperative to recover ethics as the core value for practices and efforts aimed at creating more equitable and just societies.

Q&A: How Faith Communities Can Help Fight Violence Against Children

"It’s important to know how families view the power relations that make them protective or destructive of rights," in a world where every year 275 million children witness scenes of domestic violence, said United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) expert Eduardo Gallardo.

DEVELOPMENT: Food Crisis May Get Worse Before it Gets Better

The spreading food crisis - triggered primarily by rising prices, declining outputs and growing scarcities worldwide - is threatening to impact heavily on the most vulnerable in society: women and children.

RELIGION-COLOMBIA: Children of Hope in a Violent World

When she was 12 years old in her native Colombia, Ornella Barros decided that she did not want to be "the future, but the present; not a hope, but a certainty." Six years later, as a political science student, Barros says she made the right decision when she joined the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC).

ARGENTINA: Training Health Agents to Reduce Child Mortality

An ambitious new programme for training health agents to help reduce infant mortality in small rural communities and indigenous villages, launched by one of Argentina’s best-known human rights groups, drew many more applicants than the organisers had hoped for.

ENVIRONMENT-PERU: US-Owned Smelter Fined for Pollution

The U.S. company running a large multi-metal smelter in the Peruvian city of La Oroya, one of the most polluted places on earth, is facing sanctions for violating air quality standards.

AFRICA: Millions of Children Falling Through the Cracks

A significant proportion of the world's 2.2 billion children, many of whom are victims of violence, sexual abuse, labour exploitation and preventable diseases, are from the crisis-plagued African continent.

MIDEAST: Just The Place To Be, And Not To Be

Fadel Shana just had to go to the scene of the Israeli bombing. As a Reuters cameraman, that was his job. He wasn't the only one killed, but through his pursuit of attacks as they happen, he was always more at risk than most others.

BALKANS: Religious Differences Go To School

When parents of today's school children went to school, religion was a private matter, something talked about at home or among friends and relatives in communist former Yugoslavia.