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The only African woman to win that award, Professor Maathai has also served as a Government minister, lawmaker, academic and women's rights advocate over the past four decades.

The only African woman to win that award, Professor Maathai has also served as a Government minister, lawmaker, academic and women's rights advocate over the past four decades.

The only African woman to win that award, Professor Maathai has also served as a Government minister, lawmaker, academic and women's rights advocate over the past four decades.

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.

violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement of equality, development and peace

violence against women constitutes a violation of the rights and fundamental freedoms of women

violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women, and that violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men

Children and education systems are often on the front line of violent conflict. Of the world’s 72 million children who don’t attend school, about one-third live in only 20 conflict-affected countries.

The report will also explore the role of inappropriate education in fostering conflict and explore ways that education can be a force for peace, social cohesion and human dignity.

Save the Children, which in 2006 launched its campaign Rewrite the Future to get children in conflict-affected countries into school, released a report this month called The Future is Now, which points out that “civilians now make up more than 90% of casualties in the world’s conflicts and about half of those are children.”

Since the Second World War, while the number of conflicts between countries has declined, the number of civil wars has steadily increased – bringing more and more civilians into the firing line, and exposing schools, schoolchildren and teachers to deadly violence.

An increasing number of children are being killed and injured in the Afghan conflict,

Education is often deliberately targeted in such violence, according to evidence outlined last month by Human Rights Watch in Schools as Battlegrounds, an essay in the organisation’s World Report 2011.  “Intentional targeting of education is a far-reaching if underreported phenomenon,” Zama Coursen-Neff and Bede Sheppard write in the essay.

Education has long been held up as a shining example of reconstruction in Afghanistan. Donors have ploughed approximately $1.9bn into rebuilding the Afghan education system since 2001. The Back to School campaign, launched in 2002 as a joint Afghan government/un Initiative, was labelled an "inspiration" and the flagship of reconstruction and development efforts in Afghanistan.

The achievements of the Back to School campaign were undeniably impressive. In just the past two years, 2,281 schools have been built across the country. Around 5,000 Afghan girls were enrolled in school in 2001. Now there are 2.4 million, a staggering 480-fold increase.

Now, according to the report, Afghanistan's education system is sliding backwards and becoming crippled by poverty, increasing insecurity and a lack of investment in infrastructure and trained staff.

The political upheaval in Côte d’Ivoire is taking a heavy toll on education, especially in the north, illustrating starkly the devastating impact conflict can have on learning opportunities – and the vicious circle in which conflict and education can become trapped.

A teacher described his school in Abidjan, the commercial capital, as much better than others in the city: “There are around 63 students per teacher – that’s a small class; it’s considered good. But there are no tables, no chairs, sometimes there’s no light. Sometimes students take it in turns to come into the classroom to sit on the few chairs.”

This year’s Global Monitoring Report focuses on other ways in which education failures can stoke conflict – such as perpetuating prejudice instead of promoting tolerance, and failing to pass on the skills that children need to escape poverty. The report lays out practical steps that governments and the international community can take to make sure that education builds peace rather than fanning the flames of war.

Decades of political violence in northern Central African Republic have caused widespread destruction and displacement. The educational sector has been badly affected by a dire shortage of teachers and adequate physical infrastructure. For thousands of children, classes take place not in solid buildings of brick, but in rudimentary “bush schools”.

“Needs are huge and funds insufficient. More appropriate infrastructure as well as qualified teachers are needed. Because of difficulties in the conflict-affected areas of the North, disparities in terms of access and quality are deepening,” Farid Boubekeur, chief education officer with the un Children’s Fund (unICEF) in CAR, told IRIN.

For about 200 pupils of the primary school Ecole Ouande, in the Linguiri Village of the M'Brès Sub-Prefecture in the northeast of the country, lessons are conducted under a big tree with five pupils sharing each wooden desk.

An assessment conducted by UNICEF and its partners in 10 regions of South and Central Somalia looked at the impact the drought and famine will have on education. The assessment also indicated that in Lower and Middle Juba and Bay regions, as many as half of all teachers may not return to their classrooms when schools re-open.

Since the declaration of famine in Somalia however, there has been no new funding for education.

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.

GANTA TOWN, Liberia, 16 September 2011 – War, bullets and bloodshed – words which generations of Liberians are still more familiar with than books or schools. It’s only been eight years since the country knew peace; the scars from its paralyzing 14-year civil war remain visible as its people try to heal. Today, the government is working to rebuild the infrastructure that was completely destroyed – large parts of Liberia doesn’t have roads and millions are living without basic access to water, healthcare or electricity. But ask any Liberian what they need most and the answer is the same – education

In her welcome message UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova noted that the coUNtry of eight million people faces "immense challenges," but pledged that the agency would support the nation to strengthen its education system and train teachers and other education professionals.

The latest global monitoring report on education from UNESCO, released in JUNe, foUNd that South Sudan is last in the world league table for enrolment in secondary education and second-last for net enrolment in primary-level education. Textbooks are in short supply, usable classrooms are UNavailable and there are not nearly enough trained teachers. Women and girls are particularly badly affected. Just eight per cent of women in South Sudan know how to read and write and there are estimated to be only 400 girls in the last grade of secondary school across the impoverished coUNtry.