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13 September 2011 – A new report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) highlights significant gaps in areas such as education and health, mostly favouring males, as boys and girls in developing countries grow older. “While there is little difference between boys and girls in early childhood with respect to nutrition, health, education and other basic indicators, differences by gender appear increasingly more pronounced during adolescence and young adulthood,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director.

The data shows that girls are significantly more likely to be married as children (under 18 years of age) and to begin having sex at a young age. Young women are less likely to be literate than young men and are less likely to watch television, listen to the radio and read a newspaper or magazine. In addition, young men are better informed about HIV/AIDS and are also more likely to protect themselves with condoms during sex. Young women in sub-Saharan Africa, the report says, are two to four times more likely to be infected with HIV/AIDS than young men.

Bujumbura — Burundi is set to benefit from a rice fortification technology that will not only be the first in Africa but will also help check malnutrition in children through school-feeding programmes. International organizations PATH and World Vision will introduce Ultra Rice, made from rice flour and enriched with micronutrients, including iron, zinc and folic acid, to about 15,000 children from April.

According to Neilson, the project will impact "on the attendance and retention of primary-school students. In addition, the students continue to receive nutrition education through the government health and education programmes." Rice is not a staple food in Burundi, however. A parent in the capital, Bujumbura, who declined to be named, said: "In our home villages, we eat rice only on special occasions, like Christmas or during other ceremonies. This will be interesting for children to get it at school on a daily basis; we hope its taste won't be too different from the normal rice."

Nancy Walters, the chief of school feeding policy at WFP, told a New York forum on hunger that the programmes have many benefits beyond the immediate goal of ensuring children do not go hungry. They help children stay in class, reduce levels of diseases and other health problems, empower girls, lift education standards and free many youngsters from having to work.

Some 66 million schoolchildren in dozens of countries currently receive meals through the programmes, and Ms. Walters said WFP would continue to fund and implement them with the help of its current partners.

"We have seen the impact of fortified biscuits on anaemia levels in Bangladesh, for example. We know about the impacts in terms of gender, social protection, stability, income transfer, freed parental labour, combating child labour impacts and how school feeding can be a platform to local production, nutrition, hygiene and HIV information." She also emphasized their value to efforts to reach the social and economic targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have a target date of 2015.

Malawi struggles to cope GA_googleFillSlot( "AllAfrica_Story_InsetB" ); GA_googleCreateDomIframe('google_ads_div_AllAfrica_Story_InsetB' ,'AllAfrica_Story_InsetB'); Other countries have been less successful. Malawi eliminated its school fees in 1994. But with less than half of Kenya's gross domestic product per person and fewer financial and human resources to draw on, it still faces difficult challenges in providing universal primary education.

As in many other African countries, notes the UN study, "the adoption of universal primary education was triggered by political demands rather than by rational planning processes." Although Malawi had lifted some fees for Standards 1 and 2 and waived primary education fees for girls prior to 1994, the decision to eliminate all fees coincided with the return of multiparty elections that year. The focus, the researchers found, was on increasing enrolment. "Very little attention was paid to quality issues."

One immediate response was to hire 20,000 new teachers, almost all of whom were secondary school graduates who were given only two weeks of training. Plans to provide on-the-job training failed to materialize. Instructional quality declined sharply as the pupil-teacher ratio climbed to 70 to 1.

While the UN report showed that progress has been made in many areas, the world is still falling short of meeting the MDGs, and the presentation at the World Affairs conference offered great insight as to why hunger is such a deciding factor on achieving the these goals.

“Hunger is the common enemy to all [the MDGs].” It makes sense that the eradication of hunger and extreme poverty is the first MDG, as none of the others can be accomplished without this. Children will have to work rather than go to school if their families are starving, and good nutrition is essential to reducing child mortality and improving maternal health. Drugs to treat malaria and HIV will be ineffective if the patient is famished, (think how many drugs instruct to take with food), and women cannot be empowered and support themselves if they have nothing to eat. For these reasons and more, hunger is the central roadblock to achieving the MDGs.

Despite a decade-old commitment by world leaders to tackle the crisis, some 8.8 million children still die annually before they reach the age of 5. Nearly all of these needless deaths are easily preventable at little cost. Consider that number, 8.8 million. That is more than all Canadians aged 19 or younger. And that's how many young children die every year. It works out to 24,000 children per day. Seventeen per minute. Or 400 school bus loads every day, 365 days a year. All dead.At the same time, 500,000 mothers die annually in childbirth or from other pregnancy-related causes. In other words, simply being pregnant can kill you, depending on where you live. As the mother of a nearly 2-year-old child, I am reminded daily how fortunate I am to live in Canada. It is unimaginable to me that my child could die, as 1 million do every year, from the lack of a $10 bed net to protect him from malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Diarrhea kills 1.5 million children annually. It is easily treated. So is malaria. Also, child blindness, too common in the developing world, can be prevented by just two vitamin A pills per year. Total cost: 4 cents. Better nutrition and safer birth conditions would annually save the lives of several hundred thousand pregnant women. Ten years ago, the nations of the world pledged to reduce hunger and death from a lack of basic health care. In one of their UN Millennium Development Goals, leaders committed to reduce maternal mortality rates by three-quarters and child mortality rates by two-thirds within 15 years. But, sadly, neither will be achieved by that target date, just five years away, unless donor countries like Canada reinvigorate the initiative.

Today, the world spends $49 billion (U.S.) on pet food every year. If half of that amount were added to current annual spending on maternal and child health, the child death rate could be cut nearly in half.

For many children in Somalia, the arrival of September meant the start of a new school year. But, for a huge number of children, school remains inaccessible. In South Central Somalia, an estimated 1.8 million children aged between 5 and 17 have been out of school. This number looks set to grow even bigger with the influx of internally displaced people caused by the country’s food crisis.

For children facing these risks, education is essential to provide protection in a safe environment. Children learn life-saving knowledge and skills, and they become more linked into other services – food, nutrition, health, water, sanitation and child protection. That’s why our emergency team in Somalia is making access to schools a priority. We’re building on Save the Children 20-years’ experience here. We’re now running in South Central Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland.

Another is the project in Somalia called Strengthening Capacity for Teacher Training, which works with primary and secondary school teachers. Teachers are trained in teaching skills, and the project focuses on girls’ education and on using effective teaching methodologies that incorporate local materials developed by Somali staff.

This is a war zone. Families in the sprawling camp have lost everything – everything that is except a drive to get their kids an education. In the midst of the most abject poverty, parents have come together to build makeshift classrooms, hire a teacher, and buy a blackboard. Many of the kids work in the afternoon, selling charcoal to pay the $1 fee charged every term. “Being in school is fun – and people with an education can have a better life. I’ll be a doctor,” says David Ichange, aged 12.

If every girl in sub-Saharan Africa had a secondary education, it would cut under-five deaths by around 1.8 million. The reason: educated mothers are empowered to demand better health and nutrition provision.

The same holds for cutting poverty. If every child in a low income country got into school and left with basic reading skills, the growth effects would lift 171 million people out of poverty. That’s a 12% decline.