Teachers Without Borders

However, with almost 39% of the world’s population or over 2.6 billion people living without improved sanitation facilities, the report also points out that much more needs to be done to come close to the sanitation MDG target. If the current trend continues unchanged, the international community will miss the 2015 sanitation MDG by almost one billion people.

Unsafe water and poor sanitation claim 4,500 lives day. What should we do about it?

On Monday, March 22, World Water Day celebrates its 17th year of publicizing water issues with the theme “Clean Water for a Healthy World.” Our Global Issues/Citizen Voices essay contest highlights this theme with hopes of prolonging the conversation. From entrants detailing first-hand accounts of how the lack of access to clean water has affected the lives of their families and communities to policy-based analyses of the issues and solutions, the participants consider a range of points, each adding a unique perspective to the dialogue.

Yet 1.1 billion people continue to live without access to reliable sources of clean water.

Open defecation—humans defecating outside—is the ugly stepsister of clean water scarcity, which we commemorate on World Water Day. Two-and-half billion people lack access to even simple pit toilets, which is three times as many people as lack access to clean drinking water and results in two million preventable deaths per year, mostly of children under five from intestinal diseases.

Jack Sim, the self-described “evangelist of toilets,” from the World Toilet Organization, theorizes that’s because “every politician wants to be photographed standing next to a new well, but no one wants to be photographed standing next to a new toilet.” And without some portion of the powers that be to drive a story, coverage becomes scarce.

India has the largest number of open defecators in the world, over 600 million of them. At a certain level, this fact is inescapable. Within a hundred yards of our five star hotel in New Delhi, we could find expanses of human feces—we could find them because we could smell them. Touring Delhi slum clusters with local activists, we traversed neighborhoods where 5,000 people share 20 public toilets, which is nearly the same as having no toilets, resulting in even vaster expanses of human feces. But in urban areas, open defecation can also be invisible in the way poor people can quickly become invisible.

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Indeed, there is consensus that no strategy for poverty reduction and development can ignore humanity's need for water and sanitation.

While there are specific MDGs relating to water and sanitation, it is an indisputable fact that the achievement of all other MDGs are dependent on access to clean water and improved sanitation facilities.

At Ashaiman alone, 2,015 children, each bearing a plastic drinking cup, formed a 2,015-people queue to remind duty bearers of the 2015 deadline for the meeting of the MDGs on water and sanitation.

UNICEF is working to increase the numbers of girls in school by supporting the training of female teachers and setting up child-friendly classrooms.  Mr. Toole visited female students at Herat Girls High School to see such efforts firsthand.“To see such a big number of girls who are enthusiastic about becoming teachers, doctors or engineers is extremely encouraging. Their protection is among our key concerns in this country where early marriage and the denial of access to education for females is still deeply rooted in the society,” said Mr. Toole.

“Especially in high-risk, difficult to access areas, UNICEF is promoting community-based schools,” said UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan Catherine Mbengue. “We set up community management committees for each school, discussing with them from the onset the importance of girls’ education and their role in making it happen.”Afghanistan has seen an improvement in the number of children – including girls – who are enrolled in school. Today about three quarters of boys and nearly half of girls of primary school age are enrolled in primary school. While this is a drastic increase from the 42 per cent rate for boys and 15 per cent rate for girls in 2000, the gender gap remains wide.

A total of 613 school incidents were recorded from January to November 2009, a frightening increase from 348 incidents in 2008.  Insecurity is pervasive — with continued threats and direct attacks against schools, health centres and humanitarian workers.

Jos — A three-day inter-faith conference on peace in Plateau State came to a close with participants drawing up a 12-point communiqué on how lasting peace can be achieved in the state.

Speaking at the closing ceremony, Mrs Tallen noted that the crises that had torn the state apart in the past has been an eye opener to all those who knew the price of peace, adding that both religion has their sad tales to tell. According to her, the time has come for youths in the state and across the country, to learn to say no to violence and be tolerant of each other no matter what it may entail.

A big lesson, he said had been learnt and with this conference, it was expected that all forms of hatred should be eschewed in the interest of lasting peace, even as it had become mandatory that people from both religion must learn to live together as it was the case in the past. In his own comments, Mr. Daniel Choji said the conference had assisted in no small measure in identifying the causes of the problems, and the frank discussions had enabled all participants an opportunity to take the messages back to the grassroots as that would be the only way to mend fences properly.

Imagine, for a moment, that you had to walk for miles to find clean water. Imagine again, if you lived in a country devastated by civil war and humanitarian disaster, and your only source of water was contaminated by the runoff from refugee camps—garbage, human excrement, and people bathing.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement today. “Water is the source of life and the link that binds all living beings on this planet,” he said. “It is connected directly to all our United Nations goals: improved maternal and child health and life expectancy, women's empowerment, food security, sustainable development and climate change adaptation and mitigation.” There is good news: there have been vast improvements in water and sanitation—so much so that 87% of the world population can now access safe drinking water, and is on-target to meet the targets identified in the Millennium Development Goals. The majority of these improvements have been in rural areas.

90% of the 1.1 billion people forced to defecate in open areas due to a lack of toilets or latrines are rural dwellers. Conditions such as these are the primary cause of the 1.5 million deaths of children under five years old due to diarrhoeal diseases, the UN reports. Such needless deaths have been called “an affront to our common humanity” by Ban Ki-Moon. In addition to faecal contamination risks, poor personal hygiene, agricultural and livestock runoff, and inadequate garbage disposal services can spread water-borne diseases.

Addressing the nation to mark the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 that makes elementary education an entitlement for children in the age group of 6-14 years, Dr. Singh said the States should join in this national effort with full resolve and determination. “Our government, in partnership with the State governments will ensure that financial constraints do not hamper the implementation of the Right to Education Act. “Today, our government comes before you to redeem the pledge of giving all our children the right to education.

“I call upon all our teachers across the country to become partners in this effort. It is also incumbent upon all of us to work together to improve the working conditions of our teachers and enable them to teach with dignity, giving full expression to their talent and creativity.'' He said parents and guardians, too, had a critical role to play having been assigned school management responsibilities under the Act. The needs of every disadvantaged section of our society, particularly girls, Dalits, Adivasis and minorities must be of particular focus as the Act is implemented.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said the biggest challenge to the implementation of the Act would be lack of infrastructure and teachers. Bringing children from the disadvantaged sections into the net would also be challenging, he said.

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."

The United Nations Mission in Sudan is taking to the airwaves with a new radio drama series aimed at raising public awareness on various issues, including measures related to the ongoing process of implementing the peace accord that ended two decades of civil war in Africa’s largest country.

Radio drama is considered an effective way of promoting debate on sensitive social and political issues in a compelling way, while also reaching populations with low literacy rates and who have limited access to information because they live in remote areas.

Kampala — Higher education in East African Community states is to be harmonised by May this year. Minister of State for Higher Education Mwesigwa Rukutana told Daily Monitor last week that a number of meetings will be conducted in the next three months to discuss the similarities and differences in the current education system among the partner states.

Evoke emerged from discussions with universities in Africa who increasingly wanted to find avenues to encourage their students to engage in local communities and develop innovative solutions to local development challenges. The universities were searching for ways to engage students in real world problems and to develop capacities for creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial action that many believe will be the engine for job creation now and in the future.

Evoke  therefore is designed to empower young people all over the world, and especially in Africa, to start solving urgent social problems like hunger, poverty, disease, conflict, climate change, sustainable energy, health care, education, and human rights.; to collaborate with others globally; and to develop real world ideas to address these challenges.Players will be challenged to complete a series of ten missions and ten quests -- one per week, over the course of the ten-week game.   The "text book" for this course is an online graphic novel written by Emmy-award nominated producer Kiyash Monsef. 

The game's creative director, alternate reality pioneer Jane McGonigal, is debuting the game at this week's TED conference in Long Beach, California.  As she describes the game, "An evoke is an urgent call to innovation.  When we evoke, we look for creative solutions. We use whatever resources we have. We get as many people involved as possible. We take risks. We come up with ideas that have never been tried before. That's what we're asking players to do in this online game. To learn how to tackle the world's toughest problems with creativity, courage, resourcefulness and collaboration."

n March 2000, the UN Security Council, in its Proclamation on International Women's Day, recognized that gender equality is an integral component of peace

On 31 October 2000 it passed Security Council Resolution 1325 [PDF, 35 Kb], calling on governments – and the Security Council itself – to include women in negotiations and settlements with respect to conflict-resolution and peace-building. The resolution reaffirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, and the need to implement fully international humanitarian and human rights law that protect the rights of women and girls during and after conflicts.

Increasing the representation of women at all decision-making levels

goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of all humanity

the status of women has advanced in some important respects in the past decade but that progress has been uneven, inequalities between women and men have persisted and major obstacles remain, with serious consequences for the well-being of all people

Women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace

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