UNICEF Ranks Canada 17th Out of 29 Rich Countries in Child Well-Being Guide

17th out of 29 so-called rich countries when it comes to the well-being According to a new study from UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency, Canada ranks of children. The UN agency located Canada 14th in educational well-being, 15th in material well-being, 16th in behavior and risks and a low 27th in health and safety.

Canada scored third-best on smoking, with UNICEF saying only four per cent of brood aged 11, 13 and 15 reported smoking at least once a week. When it comes to fatness, Canada is third from the bottom, with 20.24 per cent of children aged 11, 13 and 15 deemed overweight based on the body mass index.

Canada ranked 21st in maltreatment, with 35 per cent of children aged 11, 13 and 15 report being bullied at school at least once in the past couple of months. The Netherlands leftovers the overall leader in the study and is the only country ranked with the top five in all extent of child well-being.

Out of School Children And Give Up a National Crisis: UNICEF

With eight million children never having stepped inside a school and 80 million dropping out without completing necessary schooling, the United Nations Children’s Fund has described the situation as a national emergency and called for equipping the government and civil society to realize the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. 

According to Louis-Georges Arsenault UNICEF Representative in India, There has been growth in implementation of the Act in the past three years but children are still dropping out, not for labour, but since they are not learning anything in schools.

13 per cent of students did not transfer from the primary to upper primary level and there was not much on offer for emigrant children, and dropouts who wanted to rejoin school, though the Act did provide for bridge courses. 

Real work had to be done on teacher quality, classroom teaching, effective school functioning and improved school managing in the coming two years.

Lack of Hygiene, Clean Water Killing Kids-Unicef

The United Nations Children’s Fund has called on governments, civil society groups and citizens of nations to memorize the children as World Water Day was marked last Friday.

UNICEF supposed that, internationally, an estimated 2,000 children under the age of five die every day from diarrheal diseases and, of these, some 1,800 deaths are linked to water, sanitation etc.

If 90 school buses filled with kindergartners were to collide each day, with no survivors, the world would take notice. However this is exactly what is happening every single day because of poor water, sanitation and hygiene. According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization in the Philippines, an estimated 26 percent of the people do not have improved sanitation, translating to more than 24 million persons.

Approximately 90 percent of child deaths from diarrheal diseases are directly linked to impure water, lack of cleanliness and insufficient hygiene. But despite a growing global population, these deaths have dropped considerably in the last decade, from 1.2 million in 2000 to about 760,000 in 2011.

UNICEF: Palestinian Children under Arrest by the Israeli Military

According to UNICEF Wednesday report Palestinian children under arrest by the Israeli military are topic to widespread, systematic ill-treatment that violates international law.

The United Nations Children Fund estimated that 700 Palestinian children aged 12-17, most of them boys, are arrested, interrogated and apprehended by the Israeli military, police and security agents every year in the occupied West Bank.

UNICEF supposed it had recognized some examples of practices that "amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture.
 

Israeli distant Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said officials from the ministry and the Israeli military had cooperated with UNICEF in its work on the report, with the goal of improving the treatment of Palestinian minors in custody.

UNICEF: Risks Children and Women are Far from Over

The United Nations Children's Fund Nations Programme headquartered in New York City that provides long term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries. With the recent military intervention to recover control of Mali’s vast desert north, the humanitarian situation, exacerbated by insecurity, has become even more serious for the most susceptible populations children and women.

To give an inside look at what it takes to react to a complex emergency on the ground, UNICEF has published a special report, Supporting Women and Children through an Emergency. The report archives the scale-up of UNICEF operations in Mali, a country already struggling from poverty, inadequate education and a weakened health system. Building on gains and results over the past year, UNICEF is suspended to respond to the new risks that Mali’s children and women face.

UNICEF: Offering Humanitarian Support to Pakistan

For 2013, United Nations Children Fund has planned to continue supporting humanitarian support in Pakistan in coordination with the government, other UN agencies and non-governmental organizations in order to respond to the needs of the millions of children and women affected by lack of confidence and floods. 

According to UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children, 2013, the organization will deliver an integrated package of maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition services at the community level.

All through the current year, UNICEF is to provide water, sanitation and hygiene services to 1.5 million people in the affected areas, to make sure the supply of lifesaving drinking water and reduce the risk of water-related diseases throughout hygiene promotion.

In addition, as Pakistan is prone to recurrent natural disasters, emergency preparedness activities and response in 2013 will be of supreme importance, and must include efforts to strengthen pliability though national capacity development and attentiveness.

The International Day of the Girl Child: UNICEF focuses on ending child marriage

UNICEF and associates are highlighting joint efforts to end child marriage - a fundamental human rights violation that impacts all aspects of a girl's life on the first International Day of the Girl Child. According to Anju Malhotra with the gender and rights section in UNICEF the UN and partners are coming together to show the incredible progress made and to emphasize the ongoing challenges.

The release confirmed that UNICEF supported the passage of the Child Marriage Prohibition Act of 2006, and has since supported the development and completion of a national plan on child marriage ceremony that aims to coordinate programmers and policies to speak to both the causes and the consequences of child marriage.

Education is one of the most effectual strategies to protect children against marriage. When girls are able to stay in school an attitudinal change can also occur towards their opportunities within the community.