Sexuality No More Comic in Japan

As of July, Japanese minors will no longer be able to buy comic books featuring children portrayed as violent or as sexual objects, under an ordinance enacted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government last December.

U.S. Takes Action Against ‘Gendercide’

Every year on Jun. 1, the People's Republic of China pulls out all the stops – hosting festivals, printing greeting cards and sponsoring public games and parades – in celebration of International Children's Day, a holiday widely acknowledged to have originated with the rise of communism and now observed primarily in communist or former communist countries.

Human Rights Teachings Spread Ripples of Hope

In a new curriculum introduced last December, thousands of students in New York State are learning about modern-day human rights defenders, and that they too can make a positive difference in the world.

Putting Road Safety on the Development Agenda

The leading killer of children over the age of five is not malaria or dysentery, but cars and trucks. And 90 percent of those children are killed on roads in developing countries.

INDIA: Unwed Tribal Mothers Seek Aid

For Janu, walking the streets to beg for alms is the only option for survival. After all, she has a two-year-old daughter to feed, and she herself, at 14 years old, is little more than a child.

MEXICO: Citizen’s Trial Finds State Guilty in Deaths of 49 Children

"We didn't expect support from so many people in the capital. The authorities have to answer for this, and they must understand that we will not give up until justice is done," Manuel Rodríguez Amaya told IPS, his eyes still wet from bursting into tears at the end of the citizen's trial.

INDIA: Violations May Hit Vaccination Plans

After a government report confirmed major ethical violations in trials of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccines on Indian schoolgirls, senior doctors are calling for transparency in clinical trials conducted under private-public partnerships.

DR CONGO: Measles Claims Lives as Public, Private Resources Stretched Thin

More than 3,000 cases of measles have been recorded in the past three months in two districts of Maniema Province, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Young Panamanians Develop Antibodies Against Violence

In Panama's largest cities, minors under 18 not under supervision of an adult must be off the streets after 9:00 p.m. The juvenile curfew law means some spend several days behind bars until someone shows up to pay the fine.

School Lunches Make For Happy Pupils in Congo

It's noon at Jean-Félix Tchicaya Primary in Pointe Noire, the economic capital of Congo. Students are settling into their chairs, but not to resume their lessons. They are waiting eagerly for the hot meal that's served in the classroom each day, their plates already laid out on their desks.

INDIA: Smuggling Everything From Cough Syrup to Sex

Sakina Bibi is a sex worker in the red light area of Kalabagan in Murshidabad, a border district in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal where everything from cattle to electronic goods, from rice and sugar to cough syrup, and women, are being smuggled.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Four Percent for Education

The government of the Dominican Republic, where one-third of the population of is under 14 years of age, is facing a well- organised and growing citizens' campaign to increase the amount spent on public education.

North Korea Hungry for Aid

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) lived through a famine that killed, at conservative estimates, nearly a million people in the 1990s, and is now nearing the brink of a second food disaster, according to an extensive study conducted this year by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

AFRICA: Childhood Blindness – Catch Them Young

Every minute, somewhere in the world, a child goes blind according to the World Health Organization. Three in five poor children who go blind are likely to die within two years of losing their sight - yet half of cases of childhood blindness are avoidable.

Q&A: Child Victims Have ‘Leading Role’ in Creating a Non-Violent Society

Appointed to the gigantic task of building international understanding of violence against children and adolescents, 58-year-old Portuguese lawyer Marta Santos Pais is based in New York and works with a small staff of only seven people.

LATIN AMERICA: Violence in the Age of Innocence

The countries of Latin America are working slowly to overcome barriers in the fight against the often brutal violence suffered by children and adolescents in their homes, schools, workplaces or juvenile detention centres.

PAKISTAN: Vaccinators Get a Shot in the Arm

The questions came like something from a medical student’s exam: What is routine immunisation? When should a vaccine be destroyed? What is the best temperature for storing a vaccine? At which angle should the needle be held while administering a pentavalent vaccine? And which five diseases does a pentavalent vaccine prevent?

YEMEN: Children Dragged Into Dangerous Protests

Children are increasingly facing frontline risks at Yemen’s anti-government protests. Parents are bringing them to demonstrations in the belief that they too are necessary for sacrifices in the revolution against President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

SENEGAL: Local Health Posts a Qualified Success

"We no longer need to go to Hanène, three kilometres away, for vaccinations or for a check-up for our children," said Maguette Niang, a 40-year-old mother from Keur Madaro, a village in the west of Senegal.

Scientists Claim Hard-Fought Ground Against Malaria

By the time the reader gets to the end of this paragraph, an African child, likely under five years old, will have died from malaria.

Vast Majority of Stillbirths Found in Developing Countries

According to a special series in the medical journal The Lancet presented in New York Wednesday at the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, over 2.6 million stillbirths occur worldwide annually, affecting mostly African and Asian women who lack proper access to health care and facilities.