A town in the Hiraan region of Somalia is experiencing some good news as more students are returning to school. School officials and locals of Beletweyne believe that this is due to the developing peace and calm in the region.

Last year, numerous schools around the region were forced to close due to lack of safety. A large part of the students also stopped attending classes because of the security issues. This month, however, many of the students are returning to their classrooms since Islamist insurgents and government soldiers have seized fighting for the meantime. An educational official named Abdullahi Yusuf Nur also attributes the increasing student number to the upcoming opening of a university in Beletweyne. It is to be the town’s first university.

Town local Ambaro Guled states how she was forced to take her children away from school several times last year because of the political chaos. She and her family even had to leave their home. Now, Guled is glad that the town is enjoying a period of calm that might be longer than any they have ever experienced.

The town of Beletweyne has been the war zone of Islamic insurgents and government forces. For the past couple of months, Al-Shabab has taken control of the town.

The Gluttmacher Institute in US recently did some research in Ghana and discovered that ten percent of pregnancy-related deaths were due to unsafe abortions. Health experts say that insufficient facilities and the lack of law awareness are the factors to blame for these deaths.

Abortion has been declared legal in Ghana as early as 1985. The law states that any woman who has been the victim of rape and incest has the right to undergo an abortion. The law also extends to women whose pregnancies would only cause them mental or physical harm. Despite the legalization of abortion, it seems that only very few women are aware of this law.

In fact, even some health care providers and women’s groups were also unaware of the law. Needless to say, awareness of this abortion law is extremely important especially in a country like Ghana where a lot of females admit to seeking abortion simply because they do not have the financial stability to raise a child. Even though most of these women approached doctors and hospitals for the procedure, almost half still preferred to look for alternative solutions, such as medications or midwives. Needless to say, these non-medical procedures can have health dangers which, in many cases, have resulted to the death of the patient.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is deemed to be the most dangerous place in the world for women, thanks to thousands of rape cases that occur each year. One of the convicted rapists is Eleka Amungu who raped a 15-year-old girl last year. Amungu claims that he loved the victim and wanted to make her his wife but he did not have the money to marry her. After forcing himself on her, the parents of the girl had him arrested after he told them that he couldn’t afford to marry their daughter. Amungu is now serving his sentence at a prison in Goma.

The prison houses about 300 convicted rapists. This number pales in comparison to the 8,000 rape cases that have occurred last year in the Kivu area alone. Experts are saying that the prevalence of rape in this area of Congo could stem from the historical fact that rape was actually used as a weapon by armed soldiers since the last decade. Today, men who look to soldiers for their role models end up committing the same crime as well. What’s even more disturbing is that the rape victims are getting younger and younger. A lot of the perpetrators are also ignorant of the law and are even unaware that rape is a crime.

The government of Nepal is taking the blame for the rise of human trafficking in the country, especially among young women. Local humanitarians are pointing the finger to the failed implementation of anti-trafficking laws. This results to numerous Nepalese women being smuggled to India to work in brothels.

The Human Trafficking and Transportation Act was developed in 2008 and states that any traffickers arrested will be charged with more than $2,000 in fine and will be sentenced to prison for more than 20 years. Unfortunately, the law has done little to prevent the human trafficking crime from occurring in different parts of the country.

According to an NGO that specializes in helping trafficking victims, the problem stems from the fact that the government is not able to strongly implement the anti-trafficking laws and that among the thousands of criminals who commit trafficking, only a few hundred are punished.

The NGO also conducted research and discovered that a lot of the human traffickers of Nepal are from criminal gangs who are connected to brothel owners in India and that traffickers usually attract their victims by promising possibilities of job or good marriages. Most of the girls and women who are trafficked also resided in towns that are near the perpetrators.

Individuals who find themselves in natural disasters, crimes and other types of catastrophes re now just a
click away from safety, thanks to a recently invented software that was used in the devastating earthquake
in Haiti.
The website of the software is “Ushahidi” which, when translated to Swahili, means “testimony”. The
software has already been used during the 2008 Kenya elections, to report violent crimes and other events.
According to an Ushahidi volunteer, the 2008 elections motivated Kenyan civilians to look for a way
through which they can stay connected to share events that they witnessed.
The main function of the software is to allow participants to send text messages to each other so they can
all stay updated about the violent incidents occurring in the country.
The Ushahidi has actually been used in other parts of the world. For instance, in 2008, it was used in South
Africa in order to map attacks. The software has also been used in order to supervise elections in countries
such as India, Sudan and Mexico. During a strong blizzard in Washington, the software was also utilized as
a warning system for drivers who were heading toward snow-covered roads. Perhaps the most recent use of
the software is in the oil spill in Mexico.

The US State Department recently added several Southeast Asian countries in its list of human trafficking watch list. The governments of these added countries are advised to boost their efforts when it comes to tracking down and punishing perpetrators.

Laos, Thailand and Vietnam are countries that have made plenty of effort over the past year to battle its human trafficking problem. However, according to the recent report of Trafficking in Persons of the US State Department, these efforts are not merely enough. The three countries still ended up in the second their of the watch list along with fellow Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

According to Phil Robertson of the Human Rights Watch, including these countries in the watch list is a good move to push their governments in the right direction. He expects that the governments will be consulting the report to discover problem areas that need to be addressed in order to remove their countries from the list.

According to ECPAT, a group of organizations that battle children human trafficking, even though many countries have made some progress in the area of human trafficking, there is still a long way to go.

In a country like Somalia where the population is predominantly Muslim, it’s very rare for HIV victims to speak about their condition. What’s even more rare is if the HIV victim is a woman. Despite this, a 50-year-old woman who is a Somali refugee is speaking out about her disease.

The mother of four shared how she discovered that she had HIV about a year ago. Primarily, she only wanted to get tested for tuberculosis but doctors told her to seek voluntary counseling and testing as well. She was shocked and devastated when the results of the tests came back positive. She suspects that the HIV was passed on to her by her ex-husband who remains in Somalia and whom she heard was also sick. Fortunately, all her children tested negative.

She also talks about how the virus made her see who her friends really are. People whom she thought were her friends quickly turned against her upon finding out that she had HIV. In fact, she and her children have had to move around four times because her neighbors discriminate against her and her family. Some neighbors even assume that just by talking to her, they could contract the disease.

She shares how ignorance is the biggest problem for HIV victims in the country today and how this ignorance prohibits patients like her from speaking up.

The responsibility of feeding children used to lie solely on the women of Mali. Now, however, nutrition experts are reporting that men are participating more and more in the activity. This is considered to be an important progress especially in a country that is devastated by under-nutrition in its children.

According to an NGO on nutrition, a lot of men in the country are now realizing how significant nutrition is, and that it is an issue for which the entire family is responsible, not just women.

The NGO also attributes this awareness to extensive nutrition campaigns. Economic reasons are also behind this awareness. When children receive proper nutrition, they also prevent illnesses and malnutrition. Sick and malnourished children call for treatments that can prove to be expensive.

According to Mali’s Health Ministry, it’s extremely important for men to get involved in children’s nutrition since men are the heads of the families who make important decisions.

Fathers of the region are now opting for fortified flour and making sure that the daily meals of the family include plenty of eggs, fish, fruits and other healthy foods.

Aside from the men, local leaders are also stepping up to the plate when it comes to children’s nutrition. For instance, women in the region used to think that the milk of an early mother is toxic. Leaders are now correcting this false idea and encouraging women to feed this milk to babies.

It has merely been months since the nation of Haiti was devastated by powerful earthquake and citizens have barely recovered from the disaster. Unfortunately, it seems that the Haitian people are about to face a new challenge as the country’s storm season draws near. Strong wind and rains are currently sweeping through the country, destroying the makeshift tents that evacuees have built for their living quarters.

According to an officer who is overlooking the shelters, more displaced people are opting for tarpaulin instead of ordinary tents because tarpaulin is made of stronger material and is able to hold up better. However, the officer also says that even the best tarpaulin is no match for a hurricane. Flood is also another problem that they face.

An estimated million and a half people are living in Haitian camps. Aid providers and humanitarian agencies are currently working to build sturdier houses that are raised from the ground but the entire project could take up about a year.

Even though materials and project funding are not a problem anymore, clearing the site of rubble and settling land issues could be time-consuming.

To help the displaced families in the meantime, aid organizations are distributing building materials such as rope, wood, nails as well as instructions on how evacuees can improve their shelters.

NGOs and other humanitarian groups in Indonesia are expressing concern over the vulnerable position of children in the country, given the fact that children’s rights are still not part of the government’s top priorities.

The National NGO Coalition for Child Rights Monitoring recently released a report that showed how child protection in Indonesia can be improved, focusing on the study of the implementation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child.

Some of the group’s recommendations involved fighting selling of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

According to the studies of the National Commission for Child Protection, almost 90% of the children that was tried in court in the year 2009 were sent to jail. Surprisingly, more than half of them were sent to prisons with adults. Indonesia’s law also states that even a child by the age of eight could be held criminally responsible.

Humanitarians also continue to push for other basic children’s rights such as right to education and good health care. The report was created after studying almost 400 children across the archipelago of Indonesia. Some of the children were school dropouts, street beggars and victims of sexual crimes.

Humanitarians stated how this report gives the much-needed voice to children who are generally ignored by the country’s laws.