PHILIPPINES: Pulling Children Out of the Tunnel of Hard Labour

At the tender age of 10, Rodel Morozco was working in a goldmine and crawling inside tunnels, until one day he fell 200 feet underground because his father had blasted the tunnel with dynamite.

Sierra Leone Facing Facts of Teenage Pregnancy

On Apr. 5, the United Nations Children's Fund will launch a report on teenage pregnancy in Sierra Leone. Teenage pregnancies account for 40 percent of maternal deaths in the country, and the report comes as public health authorities recalibrate strategy to address a problem that endangers both mothers and children.

In Cambodia, Women Fear Death at Childbirth

Death haunts women in this Cambodian village at a moment of happiness - when they give birth.

Zimbabwe’s Braying Cavalry in Campaign for Literacy

Across Zimbabwe, economic and political crisis has forced students to do without books, classroom furniture, teachers - the basics of a conducive learning environment. These learners cannot go to libraries, so the libraries have gone to them.

U.S.: Budget Cuts Threaten Handful of Beds for Homeless Youth

When Malika, 21, fled her parents' house in the U.S. state of Virginia three years ago to escape a forced marriage in Iran, she did not expect to end up homeless and living in shelters.

PAKISTAN: Citizens and NGOs Step Forward to End Illiteracy

The man known as ‘Master Ayub’ holds classes for free, between three and seven o’clock. His classroom is a public park, and his students are street children six to 16 years of age who otherwise would be picking trash, begging, or slowly becoming petty thieves.

PAKISTAN: Unsung Heroines Bring Healthcare to Villages

At eight in the morning 30-year-old Sultana Solangi steps out of her house ready for her day’s work. Wearing a black gown that shows only her eyes, she is shod in comfortable slippers and lugs a large black bag.

INDIA: Tech to the Rescue of School Lunch Model

Surrounded by lush green wheat and yellow flowering mustard fields at Ekdanta primary school, it is noon and the 57 children in two combined classes are fidgety - impatient for the school served midday meal.

ZAMBIA: The Extended Family – Blessing or Burden?

Peggy Kapanda has bad memories of the time she spent living with her uncle when she was young. She was treated as a second-rank child. But this only motivated her to do a better job herself. At her small home in John Laing compound, in Zambia's capital Lusaka, she and her husband take care of two other children in addition to their own three young boys.

PAKISTAN: Deaths of ‘Unwanted’ Babies On The Rise

The graves at a cemetery in Moach Goth have no epitaphs, no verses from the Koran, not even the names of the deceased. The only inscription on the small wooden signs that serve as headstones is a number and the date of burial. The latest one is Number 72,315.

Bloggers Track Down China’s Lost Boys

Peng Gaofeng spent three years looking for his abducted son, launching an Internet campaign that eventually drew 300,000 followers. Last month, Peng was reunited with his son, and the 34-year-old has vowed to help the thousands of Chinese parents who are still trying to find their missing children.

WOMEN’S DAY: Overcoming Barriers in Central America

Amarilis Chilel, 15, left her hometown of Ixchiguán in northwest Guatemala to work as a domestic in the capital: a common story among rural girls and women in Central America. "I went to school up to fourth grade," she told IPS.

No Quiet Old Age for South Africa’s Grannies

Grannies are indispensable in South Africa. They may have been hoping for a restful old age, but the AIDS epidemic has seen them taking on motherhood for a second time, caring for grandchildren whose parents have died of the disease.

PAKISTAN: New Fears Over Malnutrition

"She was just skin and bones, even crying seemed a huge effort," Hajiani says of one-year-old Samreen Tauqir, when she saw her for the first time two months ago.

Kurd Issue to the Fore Ahead of Elections

Sultan Quyun, 58, longs for the day when the decades-long conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces will come to an end. For her, the end of violence does not just hold the promise of a possible resolution of the Kurdish issue in the country, but would bring about, she hopes, a much-awaited reunion with her son.

ARGENTINA: Trial over Baby Theft Opens at Last

After 35 years of campaigning and legal action by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the first trial over the systematic theft of babies of political prisoners during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship began Monday.

ARGENTINA: Early Treatment Can Stop Stuttering in Children

British actor Colin Firth's sensitivity and skill in portraying one man's determination to overcome stuttering, in "The King's Speech", did more than any campaign in Argentina to show people that with timely intervention, the lives of tens of thousands of children can change.

U.N. Task Force Pushes for Investment in Teen Girls

Risk of sexual violence, limited access to education, and health issues such as HIV/AIDS and forced female genital mutilation/cutting are just a few of the obstacles adolescent girls face in developing countries, yet these girls are the key to the future and the eradication of poverty, stress experts at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

PERU: Nutritional Supplement Programme Big Business for a Few

Peru's Glass of Milk Programme (PVL) is failing in its aim of providing nutritional supplements to all poor children in Peru. But it has been a big business opportunity for the handful of companies that supply the programme, according to a special audit report seen by IPS.

ARGENTINA: Pockets of Child Malnutrition Despite Economic Boom

Despite years of strong economic growth, record harvests and massive social assistance programmes, there are still places in Argentina untouched by the boom, where child malnutrition has even claimed lives.

UZBEKISTAN: EU Accused of Backing Child Labour

The EU is facing accusations of tacitly supporting child labour after its main decision-making body approved a trade agreement with Uzbekistan on textiles – an industry known to involve at least one million child labourers a year.