children's rights

Johannesburg Child Welfare welcomes the provision in the National Budget for the extension of the Child Support Grant to impoverished children aged between 16 and 18 years. This is a long-awaited development that will enable a large number of young people to complete their schooling, instead of dropping out early and falling into dangerous methods of survival such as crime, prostitution and other "worst forms" of child labour.

The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund (NMCF) is a development learning agency. The Fund seeks to employ a National Coordinator for its special pilot project, the Champions for Children Campaign. The Champions for Children Campaign is one of the vehicles through which the fund intends sustaining its vision of “Changing the way society treats its children and youth”.

The NMCF seeks to appoint a National Coordinator for the Champions for Children Campaign, based in Johannesburg, on a one-year contract.

‘Advancing Children's Rights: A Guide for Civil Society Organisations on How to Engage with the African Committee of Experts On the Rights and Welfare of the Child’ looks at how CSOs can best engage with the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the body responsible for monitoring the implementation and ensuring the protection of the rights laid out in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC).

Swartz says in response to these statistics, SOS Children’s Villages has introduced the annual World Orphan Week (WOW) to South Africa to promote awareness about orphans and their plight.

“WOW is celebrated annually across five countries and we’re excited to introduce the concept of dressing up in something ‘wow’ to raise money for the children of South Africa. We’re expecting South Africans to embrace the concept as a unique way to raise funds while having lots of fun doing it,” explains Swartz.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says it faces its biggest child protection crisis in Haiti because the devastating quake had added to the country's huge burden of unaccompanied children. UNICEF deputy executive director, Hilde Frafjord Johnson, points out that, "The risks of child trafficking, children being sold to slavery-like conditions or illegally adopted are significant."

The KwaZulu-Natal school which received a zero percent matric pass rate has had no principal since 2000 and has only six teachers -- three of whom were temporary, an education union said on Wednesday.

Zuzanawe High School in northern KwaZulu-Natal was one of the province’s four schools to receive a zero percent matric pass rate during the 2009 examinations.

The Rwandan minister of gender and family promotion, Jean d'Arc Mujawamariya, has urged the civil society organisations (CSOs) to be vigilant and identify loopholes in the Child Act by promoting and advocating for the protection of children's rights.

Mujawamariya says that the government of Rwanda had many achievements in terms of domestication and implementation of the African charter on the rights and welfare of the children.

Nearly 200 million children in developing countries suffer from stunted growth and health problems due to poor nutrition in their early years. This is according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

In its report, UNICEF says however, the percentage of children with retarded growth in Asia fell to 30 percent last year from 44 percent in 1990, and in Africa to 34 percent from 38 percent over the same period.

Tens of thousands of children in Zimbabwe have been sexually assaulted over the past 10 years. This is according to Betty Makoni, founder of the Zimbabwean NGO Girl Child Network (GCN).

Makoni, a leading children’s rights campaigner who has been forced to flee the country, points out that the country’s political and economic collapse has created a climate in which its children have become increasingly vulnerable.