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According to a February study by the Inter-American Development Bank, the cost of physical damage from Haiti’s earthquake ranges from $8 billion to $13 billion. It says, “there are few events of such ferocity as the Haiti 2010 earthquake.”

The study looks at natural disasters over the past 40 years and concludes that the death toll, per capita, of Haiti’s earthquake is four times, or more, higher than any other disaster in this time period.

The Partners In Health agency estimates some 1.3 million people were left without shelter by the earthquake. The majority of those people still do not have adequate emergency shelter nor access to potable water, food and medical attention.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 31 March, 2010 – You only have to mention the word 'school' and a sparkle comes into Taïma Celestin's dark brown eyes. It's not hard to understand why. The scheduled reopening of Haiti's schools on 5 April will be the first real opportunity for this confident 10-year-old to leave what is today her home – a tiny lean-to covered with a blue tarpaulin in a former sports ground in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince.

During the day, Taïma joins several hundred other children for informal classes run by volunteer teachers inside two large white tents that were provided by UNICEF along with 'School-in-a-box' kits full of learning materials, and a recreation kit.The classes are noisy but good-natured. They pause briefly to allow members of a local non-governmental organization to distribute fruit juice and snacks to the children.

It may be part of the healing process that has led children in the camp to invent their own name for the earthquake. "When we talk about it among ourselves, we call it 'Monsieur Gudoo-Gudoo'," Taïma says, shaking her arms in rhythm to the words, "because that was the noise it made."

Gender “Gender” refers to the social differences and relations between men and women which are learned, vary widely among societies and cultures, and change over time. The term “gender” does not replace the term “sex”, which refers exclusively to biological differences between men and women. For example, statistical data are broken down by sex. The term “gender” is used to analyse the roles, responsibilities, constraints, opportunities and needs of women and men in all areas and in any given social context. Gender roles are learned behaviours in a given society, community or other social group. They condition which activities, tasks and responsibilities are perceived as male and female. Gender roles are affected by age, class, race, ethnicity and religion, and by the geographical, economic and political environment. Changes in gender roles often occur in response to changing economic, natural or political circumstances, including development efforts or structural adjustment, or other nationally or internationally based forces. The gender roles within a given social context may be flexible or rigid, similar or different, and complementary or conflicting. Both women and men are involved in reproductive, productive and community management activities and play roles within social and political groups. Their involvement in each activity reflects the gender division of labour in a particular place at a particular time. The gender division of labour must be reflected in gender analysis.

Now as Christmas approaches, mobsters have chosen a new target, turning their sights on humble schoolteachers. Painted threats scrawled outside numerous public schools demand that teachers hand over their Christmas bonuses or face the possibility of an armed attack on the teachers - and even the children.

To make the point clear, assailants set fire to a federal preschool in the San Antonio district a week ago, leaving the director's office in smoldering ruins. Scribbled on the wall in gold paint was the reason: "For not paying."

Now with the targets being teachers, parents have pulled thousands of children from schools where heightened security already had turned them into seeming prisons, enclosed with coils of barbed wire atop concrete walls.

What factors influence whether or not teachers trained in peace education actually teach about peace?

It involves getting the adult students to express their concerns about violence in their lives, presenting an analysis of different peace strategies, and arguing that teaching about alternatives to violence is an effective way to deal with the threats of violence both in schools and in the broader community.

The objectives of the course are to explore the role of violence in the lives of students, to consider the effect of violence upon educational practices, to examine how peace education can help deal with violence, and to provide examples of peace education activities and curricular ideas.

The World Social Forum (WSF) is an international event that draws thousands of people to exchange views on globalisation, human rights and workers’ rights. A special focus in this year’s forum has been African issues, in particular developments in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the lack of action on development and poverty in Africa.

Participants agreed that unions in western Africa must pursue their efforts to urge governments to take appropriate political measures for quality education. They expressed their concerns about how it could be that countries with limited natural resources, such as Cape Verde, Mauritius and Tunisia, were among the best performers in education, while the richest countries in the region justified their bad performances with budgetary restraints.

“There is no doubt that child labour is part of the daily reality in Africa. Despite the legal tools existing to fight it, including governments signing relevant international conventions, the questions is why nothing appears to be happening?”

GARISSA, Kenya, 12 September 2011 – Dekha Mohamed Noor, 15, has not seen her family for more than a month. At the end of July, after schools closed for the August holidays, they sent her to live with a relative in Garissa, a bustling commercial hub 165 km west of her home village, Modogashe. The drought in north-eastern Kenya and much of the Horn of Africa had decimated their livestock, throwing the family into a desperate scramble for survival.

These new arrivals are placing enormous strains on local resources in host communities. Abdinoor Hussein, head teacher at Dekha’s new school in Garissa, Yathrib Primary School, says class sizes have ballooned from 50 to an average of 92 pupils, and the school’s 10 teachers are having a hard time coping with the surge

This week, with schools across Kenya reopening for the new term, Dekha joins thousands of other children from drought-affected areas who will not be returning to their former schools because they have migrated to other, better-off districts.

Researchers at Public Agenda conducted a cluster analysis of the survey results, revealing three distinct groups of teachers. Based on their individual characteristics and attitudes about the profession, teachers naturally fell into three broad categories, which the researchers call the “Disheartened,” “Contented,” and “Idealists.”

The view that teaching is “so demanding, it’s a wonder that more people don’t burn out” is remarkably pervasive, particularly among the Disheartened, who are twice as likely as other teachers to agree strongly with that view. Members of that group, which accounts for 40 percent of K-12 teachers in the United States, tend to have been teaching longer and be older than the Idealists.

Only 14 percent rated their principals as “excellent” at supporting them as teachers, and 61 percent cited lack of support from administrators as a major drawback to teaching. Nearly three-quarters cited “discipline and behavior issues” in the classroom, and seven in 10 cited testing as major drawbacks as well.

Bangkok – The Thai Government today launched the “One Million Safe Schools and Hospitals” initiative in Bangkok, with top government officials from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministries of Education, Public Health and Interior and partner agencies promising to make safety a priority at 43,004 schools and hospitals.

n recent years, Thailand has been experiencing intense disasters with increasing frequency. A series of flash floods in October and November 2010 – declared “one of the worst natural calamities” to hit the country – killed more than a hundred people, displaced thousands and affected six million in 38 provinces. Thousands of students were forced to evacuate their schools, with more than a thousand schools reportedly damaged.

“Our Government and partner agencies have pledged to spread awareness among 43,000 schools and hospitals to maintain or upgrade their safety standards.