Children and Youth

Orphaned at the age of five, Mohamed Sidibay became a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone, and owes his survival to school. A tireless advocate of education, particularly through the Global Partnership for Education, he tells the story of his debt to a teacher who knew how to reach out to him.

The people who live in Heihumiao, in central China’s Henan province, often dream about leaving the mountains to find a better life in the city. Zhang Yugun also left. But once he graduated, he chose to return to the village where he grew up – to give the children a fighting chance.

The global spread of COVID-19 has dramatically impacted our lives. In an effort to contain the virus, governments across the globe have resorted to social distancing, home lockdowns, and isolation policies. However, such measures can have a negative impact on people’s mental well-being, put pressure on their relationships and cause stress, thus potentially contributing to an increase in violence and aggression within households. A recent review of the psychological impact of quarantine measures confirms that isolation can produce several negative emotional effects, such as post-traumatic stress syndrome, emotion regulation problems, depression, and increased feelings of stress. Experiencing stress and powerlessness is associated with an increased risk of violent victimization. Perpetrator and victims often know each other. The combination of stress-inducing factors due to the lockdown and potentially living together with a perpetrator of violence may trigger an increase and worsening of various forms of violence within the household.

In his remarks to the High-level Meeting on Mali and the Sahel held on the margins of the General Debate of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, the Secretary General António Guterres acknowledged the increasing threat posed by the rise of violence in the Sahel and its spreading towards the Gulf of Guinea. He also warned about terrorist groups exploiting local conflicts and acting as defenders of communities to enhance their popularity and local support. As a matter of fact, countries in the Sahel region have been experiencing a significant increase in the level of violence, resulting in severe consequences for the population. According to Mohamed Ibn Chambas, UN Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), the casualties caused by terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, have increased five-fold since 2016. The fragile circumstances and the deteriorating security situation have also pushed many people to flee their homes, with more than one million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) sheltered in the central Sahel.

To succeed where traditional schools have failed. This is the challenge that teachers at the Centre d’intégration scolaire (Centre for academic integration, CIS) in Montreal, Canada, face every day. The Frenchlanguage school takes in students whose educational paths have been rocky – gaining their trust is a prerequisite for any learning.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, no clear evidence has emerged of a significant decrease in the supply of drugs at the global level, including in Italy, even after the quarantine was extended to the entire country.

،ويربلاب ،وهيوك ميلقإ ناّكُس عمتجي ،ةنس لك نم وينوي رهش نم لولأا عوبسلأا للاخ ديلقتلا اذه .كاميروبأ رهن يتّفض ينب طبري يذلا لابحلا سرج ميمترل ،مايأ ةثلاث ةّدلم يدالما يرغ فياقثلا ثاترلل ةلّثمُلما ةمئاقلا في 2013 ذنم هليجست ّمت زيدنلأل ميدقلا.ةّيناسنلإل

ةسردلماب مّلعم اموغن جراس نانروتاس ،ليفازارب في رايردوب لا يحب ةيئادتبلاا ةسدنهلا سيردت اّيموي ّللىوتي .وغنوكلاب ذيملاتلا نم لئاه ددعل فيصرتلاو في يموي حافك .دحاو فص في ينصوصرم.تابلطتلما ىندلأ دقتفت ةسردم

D’originaire mauritanienne, Ibrahim Thiaw a récemment été nommé conseiller spécial du Secrétaire Général des Nations Unies pour le Sahel. Ancien directeur exécutif adjoint de ONU-Environnement, M. Thiaw est notamment chargé de mobiliser un soutien national et international pour le développement socio-économique de la région du Sahel, qui couvre 10 pays africains. M. Thiaw s’est entretenu avec Minielle Baro du Centre d’information des Nations Unies à Dakar sur sa vision, le sentiment d’urgence et les opportunités d’investissement au Sahel.

Dans la chaleur étouffante d’une après-midi tropicale à Guangzhou, une ville au sud-est de la Chine, un groupe d’Africains d’âge-moyen à l’affût de clients potentiels était en vadrouille à l’entrée d’une rue bordée de boutiques tandis qu’un autre groupe de trois femmes et un homme berçant un enfant dans ses bras attendaient auprès de leurs ballots de marchandises dans une rue adjacente.

L’énergie nucléaire était auparavant une option sophistiquée réservée au monde industrialisé. Mais, elle pourrait être une source d’énergie pour la plupart des pays africains. Actuellement, seule l’Afrique du Sud possède une centrale.

Forty-nine of Africa’s 55 countries have signed the framework for the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) to create a single continental market for goods and services, with free and unfettered movement of businesspeople and investments. When at least 22 countries ratify it, the AfCFTA will officially come into force, potentially making the continent the largest trading bloc in the world. Africa Renewal’s Zipporah Musau spoke with Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), on what countries stand to gain and what challenges to expect. Excerpts.

Ibrahim Thiaw of Mauritania was recently appointed the UN Secretary-General’s special adviser for the Sahel. A former deputy executive director for UN Environment, Mr. Thiaw is now charged with, among other responsibilities, mobilising domestic and international support for the socioeconomic development of the Sahel region, which covers 10 African countries, according to the UN. In this interview for Africa Renewal, Mr. Thiaw spoke with Minielle Baro of the UN Information Centre in Dakar on his vision, the need for urgency and the significant investment opportunities in the Sahel. These are excerpts.

In a sweltering monsoon afternoon in Xiaobei, in Guangzhou, a city in southeast China, a group of young and middle-aged African men take positions up and down a street lined by shops, alert to the passing of potential clients. Not far from them, in an adjacent street, another group of Africans—three women and a man holding a child in his arms— huddle around bales of merchandise. As the sun slowly sets, the town square fills up with people.

I was born in 1990, a year after the Liberian civil war began, and was only 13 years old when the war ended in 2003. My mother told me that at the time of my birth, she could not afford even a blanket to wrap the new baby. A midwife was kind enough to assist with a cloth. Those were trying times for my family.

A new wave is sweeping across Africa. Elections on the continent are increasingly yielding younger leadership than ever before. From presidents to ministers and governors, senators to members of parliament, Africa’s young people are demanding a seat at the political table.

Mohammed Allie’s wife has given up showers while Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest city after Johannesburg, contemplates life without a drop of water in its taps. Allie, a BBC correspondent, related his wife’s experience with the shrinking supply of water, caused by an historic three-year drought.

From 2003 to 2005, retired Lieutenant General Daniel Opande was the force commander of the peacekeepers of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). Tough but diplomatic, the Kenya Defence Forces officer in 2004 got the commanders of Liberia’s warring factions to agree to the disarming of more than 100,000 former combatants. UNMIL also provided security, technical and logistical support for the electoral process that culminated in peaceful democratic elections in 2005. As the mission finally winds down operations in March 2018, Africa Renewal’s Zipporah Musau and Kingsley Ighobor interviewed Lieutenant General Opande on his experience leading a multinational force during a most challenging period in Liberia. These are excerpts.

With United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as a guest at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in his first month in office in January 2017, and then again this January past, the UN is signaling a new era of partnership with the regional body and with the continent.

Recent reports that Cape Town, a popular tourist destination in South Africa, will soon run out of water due to a prolonged drought hardly seem to be slowing down the country’s burgeoning tourism industry.

Thanks to a unique fellowship at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) as an Ibrahim Leadership Fellow, Marian Yinusa is making an impact in the lives of school-age girls in her birthplace of northern Nigeria.

Interest in cryptocurrency, a form of digital currency, is growing steadily in Africa. Some economists say it is a disruptive innovation that will blossom on the continent.

Rachel Njeri, a student of Makerere University in Uganda, wept bitterly when recounting a sexual assault that took place in April 2018. “I tried to resist his actions but he was stronger than me. He grabbed me and threw me on the cabinet files at the corner.”

With few or no opportunities to emerge as candidates for elective offices—because they are too young or because they have limited experience— some young Africans are now actively campaigning for a reduction in the age limit for running for public office.

Political insecurity in the Sahel has its roots in poverty and climate change, declares Mahamad.

For centuries, unfinished materials for clothing manufacture—silk, cotton, hides—have been sold and shipped from Africa to the fashion capitals of the West, such as London, Paris and New York. In return, a small number of ready-to-wear clothes, cheap shoes and secondhand garments head back to Africa—at vastly marked-up prices or as charity donations.

Ratifications are moving ahead, if slowly, on the newly signed African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA)—the world’s largest free trade agreement (with the most member countries) since the founding of the World Trade Organization.

Jayathma Wickramanayake, 27, from Sri Lanka, is the new UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth. Her role is to expand the UN’s youth engagement and advocacy efforts. She also serves as an adviser to the Secretary-General. Shortly after her extensive tour of the Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa in February, she sat down with Africa Renewal’s Zipporah Musau to discuss her mission. Excerpts.

Sous les auspices de l’Union africaine (UA), les dirigeants africains ont créé le Mécanisme Africain d’Evaluation par les Pairs (MAEP) en 2003, afin de suivre les performances des états membres en matière de gouvernance. Instrument d’auto-évaluation, le MAEP est destiné à stimuler l’adoption de politiques, normes et pratiques favorisant la stabilité politique, la croissance économique, le développement durable, ainsi qu’à accélérer l’intégration régionale. Zipporah Musau, d’Afrique Renouveau, s’est entretenu avec le Prof. Eddy Maloka, Directeur général du Secrétariat du MAEP.

Au Sahel, la pauvreté et le changement climatique sont les causes de l’instabilité politique, déclarait Mahamadou Issoufou, le président du Niger. Si beaucoup en conviennent, les responsables communautaires, les experts en développement et les activistes de la société civile estiment que les gouvernements de la région comme leurs partenaires internationaux n’investissent pas assez dans la création d’emplois, l’amélioration des conditions de vie ou la réduction des inégalités régionales et sociales – des situations qui incitent les jeunes désemparés à rejoindre les mouvements armés.

L’ONU renouvelle son appel à la ratification universelle de la Convention pour la prévention et la répression du crime de génocide à quelques mois à peine du 70e anniversaire de sa signature. L’appel vise à encourager les États qui ne font toujours pas parties à la convention à la ratifier ou à la signer avant l’anniversaire, le 9 décembre.

Tout au long de cette année, des électeurs devraient se rendre aux urnes dans une douzaine de pays africains. En dépit de multiples réformes politico et sociales, le passage du pouvoir d’un régime à l’autre pourrait être agitée dans certains de ces pays, dont près de la moitié pourrait connaître des conflits sectaires.

Des opportunités restrictives pour les masses juvéniles de se présenter comme candidats à des postes électifs, parce qu’elles sont trop jeunes ou ont une expérience limitée. Certains jeunes africains font désormais activement campagne pour une réduction de la limite d’âge afin de se porter candidat.

Ouoique lente, la ratification du nouvel Accord africain sur la Zone de libre-échange continentale (ZLEC) se poursuit. Il s’agit du plus important accord de libreéchange (comptant le plus grand nombre de pays membres) depuis la création de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce.

Instituteur à l’école primaire de la Poudrière à Brazzaville, au Congo, Saturnin Serge Ngoma a enseigné chaque jour la géométrie et les conjugaisons à une classe pléthorique. Un combat quotidien dans une école qui manque de tout.

En mai 2019, des archéologues ont annoncé avoir découvert en Alabama l’épave du Clotilda, le dernier bateau négrier connu à avoir accosté aux États-Unis, cinquante-deux ans après l’interdiction de la traite négrière. La nouvelle a fait la manchette des journaux du monde entier. Mais on s’y intéressait plus à l’armateur du navire, à son capitaine et au vaisseau lui-même, qu’aux victimes de cette effroyable traversée.

Las calles asfaltadas y los altos edificios acristalados de las ciudades modernas no son aptos para contrarrestar la elevación prevista de la temperatura en nuestro planeta. Las construcciones tradicionales de los países de Oriente Medio, el Golfo Pérsico y África pueden inspirar la creación de un hábitat humano más sostenible y compatible con el medio ambiente.

Tout a commencé avec l’exploration des collections audiovisuelles de l’UNESCO à l’automne 2017, après leur versement aux archives de l’Organisation. La plupart des collections avaient à peine été indexées au cours de leurs soixante-dix ans d’histoire. Se promener dans ces archives s’apparentait un peu à une visite de la bibliothèque de Babel de Borges. Parmi les milliers de documents que comptent ces archives, le seul moyen de se faire une idée de l’organisation de la collection était tout simplement d’ouvrir les tiroirs des nombreux classeurs anciens et de jeter un coup d’oeil à l’intérieur.

With the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its relevant Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the United Nations with Goal 4 renewed its mission for better education of children and young people worldwide. While the earlier Millennium Development Goals focused on access to primary education, the 2030 Agenda goes beyond this. With Goal 4 and its focus on quality education, the international community recognizes that learning goals in themselves are not enough – it is important to aim for both the quality of education as well as the social and emotional well-being of students, in order to achieve substantial learning outcomes.

Criminal justice authorities need to be able to secure electronic evidence, including on servers in the cloud, to protect society and individuals against crime online. The powers to obtain such evidence must to be subject to data protection and other safeguards. Proposals to move ahead are now available.

Companies around the globe are finding it difficult to recruit the right talent, especially for emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI). A recent survey by EY and MIT Technology Review1 showed that 48% of current challenges comes in emerging technologies from a shortage of skilled talent while on the other hand, the number of data scientists and machine learning engineers has increased tenfold in the last five years, primarily due to access to online education.

They make great soldiers as they can be fearless fighters. Their missing education leads them to take huge risks as they can be convinced of their invincibility to bullets or injury and encouraged to think that their actions substitute for playing games. Calls to martyrdom and heroic deaths, fighting for a region or the fatherland are considered a romantic and exciting attraction to young and easily influenced children.

The society we live in is so diverse and mixed that we are no longer able to understand it only through traditional research perspectives. It is multiethnic and we often see that the stories shared in the public arena do not reflect what happens in everyday life.

The phenomenon of people and organizations using “undue influence” techniques to recruit and indoctrinate young (and old) people has reached epidemic proportions. While victim-centered approaches are now being discussed and utilized in trafficking realms, little attention has been given to the actual techniques and behavioral methods that can be used to enslave a person into a new “pseudo-identity” which is dependent and obedient to their controller.

These are the days of big data and security breaches. This is a long-distance call to action. With the risks of governments rolling back data privacy regulations and explosive data processing controversies involving social media and companies, it is clear we need to talk about online privacy.

Eight to twelve million tons of plastics end up in the oceans every year. One of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), Goal 14 on life below water, calls upon states to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris, by 2025. Following China’s ban of all imports of non-industrial plastic wastes in 2018, exports of plastic wastes by high-income countries have shifted to South East Asian countries putting unbearable stress on their waste management systems. Despite worldwide attention devoted to the ocean plastics crisis, these practices are likely to aggravate the problem. It shows that current efforts are not sufficient to achieve the SDG target 14 for marine plastic litter and microplastics.

Although the term LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) may be new, the idea behind is anything but new. Same-sex relations can be traced back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however homosexual relations were not accepted until much more recently. In fact, the term homosexual was not used in the U.S. until James G. Kiernan referenced it in a Chicago medical journal in 1892, when equating it to a sexual perversion. In the 1920s LGB characters starting appearing on Broadway and, as a response, The New York Legislature banned the presentation of ‘sex perversion’ on stages. World War II helped to foster the creation of LGBT identity and communities, however the first declaration of the acronym seems unclear. The terminology is ever changing. It began as LGB, then LGBT, next LGBTQ, and most recently LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex and ally/asexual). This article will use the acronym LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender), as that is what is most commonly used in the data and literature.