Goal 2: achieve universal primary education - Newsfeed

HARGEISA Monday, March 30, 2009 (IRIN) - Harir Omar Yusuf, about to finish high school, should be choosing a degree course and deciding on a career direction; instead, he spends most of his time planning a perilous escape from his hometown of Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland in the northwest of Somalia, to Europe. "As soon as I finish high school I will go there, because I have nothing to stay for in Somaliland," he told IRIN, adding that his parents could not afford university fees and he was not assured of a place even if they could.

BONDO Friday, March 27, 2009 (IRIN) - For the past year, Karen Awuor*, 15, has had a new daily ritual– taking antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. She discovered she was HIV positive during an unintended pregnancy that forced her to drop out of school; her baby died after just four months.

NIAMEY Thursday, March 26, 2009 (IRIN) - An ongoing three-month strike by 37,000 contract teachers in Niger threatens recent gains toward meeting the country’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of providing universal primary education, according to union leaders.

GAZA CITY Thursday, March 26, 2009 (IRIN) - Many university students who lost relatives or whose homes were destroyed during the recent 23-day Israeli offensive are finding it difficult to cope, according to university officials and students.

KABUL Thursday, March 26, 2009 (IRIN) - Eighty-one primary and secondary schools which had previously been closed in southern areas of Afghanistan owing to insecurity have reopened in the past three months, the Education Ministry (MoE) has said.

MBABANE Wednesday, March 25, 2009 (IRIN) - Swaziland's High Court has ordered the government to adhere to the constitution by providing free education to primary school children.

FREETOWN Tuesday, March 24, 2009 (IRIN) - Home to 13,000 people, Kroo bay slum in central Freetown had just two running water taps before Sidiki Mansark formed the “West Sie Boys” youth cooperative, and set up public showers for slum residents.

JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, March 24, 2009 (IRIN) - As the water level in the upper Zambezi River continues to climb past its highest levels ever, destroying crops and road networks, disaster officials in Namibia and Zambia have warned that food security could worsen.

BISSAU Friday, March 20, 2009 (IRIN) - Intermittent teacher strikes that have disrupted the school year since October 2008 are on again as most of the country’s teachers went on strike on 19 March over salary arrears, according to the Union of Teachers.

OUAGADOUGOU Monday, March 16, 2009 (IRIN) - It was not the first time the Burkina Faso primary school director saw one of his female students drop out to get married, but the February wedding of 11-year-old Maimouna Tamboura was “too much” for Adama Sawadogo.

MAPUTO Saturday, March 14, 2009 (IRIN) - The plastic cap off a bottle of water, a twist of paper and a woven reed mat to serve as a tray are all that widow Fina Bota, 32, needs to sell roasted peanuts and earn a simple living in Mozambique's capital, Maputo.

HARARE Friday, March 13, 2009 (IRIN) - Crynos Mufombori, 44, is a senior teacher at a rural secondary school in Zimbabwe's Mashonaland Central Province, in the north of the country. He has made the 190km trip to the ministry of education in the capital, Harare, looking for help, as his school failed to reopen at the beginning of the academic year in January 2009.

DHAKA Thursday, March 12, 2009 (IRIN) - More than a quarter of government primary schools in Bangladesh have been forced to operate without a head teacher for over two years, jeopardising primary school education in a country struggling to eradicate illiteracy.

JOHANNESBURG Thursday, March 12, 2009 (IRIN) - The international humanitarian community's most important tool for raising resources for action in Zimbabwe, the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP), is out of date and in need of revision. The question is whether appealing for more funds to keep pace with worsening conditions will actually translate into enough money to remedy them.

MAKENI Tuesday, March 10, 2009 (IRIN) - Marie Jalloh is a Member of Parliament for Bombali district, Sierra Leone. She entered politics after graduating with a Master's degree in communications and gender development from Njala University in the capital Freetown. She spent many years working for international aid organisations, including in Guinea, where she and her family fled during the war. She ran for political office in the 2007 elections and won.

SAINT-LOUIS Tuesday, March 10, 2009 (IRIN) - Ibra Niang, 22, was recently one of the estimated 100,000 young people who enter Senegal’s stark job market each year. After seeing many of his fellow youths end up on the streets hawking used clothing or on a rickety boat headed clandestinely to Europe, Niang decided he needed a marketable skill if he was to gain a decent wage.

GAZA CITY Monday, March 09, 2009 (IRIN) - UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann M. Veneman recently paid a visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory to assess the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with special focus on children. As of 5 February, 431 Palestinian children had died and 1,872 had been wounded in the 22-day Israeli offensive which ended on 18 January, according to the Gaza health ministry.

MAKENI Friday, March 06, 2009 (IRIN) - New local laws being passed by village chiefs in northern Sierra Leone decree when a school girl is impregnated by a male student, both must drop out of school, causing concern among child protection experts.

PESHAWAR Wednesday, March 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Girls who had not been going to school in Swat Valley, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), since militants declared a ban on female education at the end of December 2008, have been tentatively returning.

KABUL Tuesday, March 03, 2009 (IRIN) - Some health specialists are suggesting that couples plan pregnancies so that the mother’s due date does not fall in the cold winter months. This, they say, will help save lives.