General News

One of the challenges facing the new African nation of South Sudan is providing education to its children.

Decades of war have left almost three-quarters of adults illiterate in the country.

Since South Sudan seceded from the north in July 2011, it has struggled to build an education system for children and to educate the millions of adults who missed out on school during the war.

In Upper Nile State, the Ministry of General Education has introduced a new curriculum which has been packaged and distributed to all states.

Dianne Penn reports.

Recently, a packed bus in India crashed some 800 kilometres from the capital, New Delhi, while trying to overtake a car on the highway. Media reports say 45 people were burnt alive.

Each year, nearly 1.3 million people die and between 20 million and 50 million more are injured as a result of road crashes, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A United Nations independent expert says the world is increasingly taking a narrow perspective on elections.

Maina Kiai, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of peaceful assembly and association, believes more emphasis is placed on election day than on the process leading up to the vote.

Mr. Kiai this week briefed the UN General Assembly’s committee which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural issues.

Syrian authorities have confirmed their willingness to participate in an international conference aimed at ending the ongoing crisis in the country.

That is one of the outcomes of UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s visit to Syria and other countries in the Middle East to shore up support for the conference.

Although no date has been set for the conference, known as Geneva II, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has indicated that it could take place in mid-November.

Syrian women living in a refugee camp in Southern Turkey are being taught the techniques of traditional carpet making.

Adiyaman camp hosts 10,000 Syrian refugees fleeing violence in their country.

The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, says the project was set up by camp management with help and money from the local municipality.

Jocelyne Sambira has the story.

Duration: 3'08"

Solutions from developing countries geared at meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are being showcased this week at the Global South-South Development Expo in Nairobi, Kenya.

The expo, which runs through Friday, is the first forum solely from the south and for the south, and looks at issues such as building green economies, sustainable development and decent work.

Every year, more than seven million girls in poor countries are giving birth before they turn 18, according to a new report by the UN Population Fund.

UNFPA’s flagship report, The State of the World Population 2013, puts a particular emphasis on girls 14 and younger who are at higher risk for maternal death and other health-related problems.

The agency is promoting a new approach to tackle the challenge of adolescent pregnancy, which doesn’t just dwell on behaviour change.

Jocelyne Sambira has more.

UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navi Pillay says she is alarmed at the excessive interference of the Supreme Court in the presidential elections in the Maldives.

Ms. Pillay released a statement on Wednesday in which she described this as a “dangerous drift in the democratic process” in the island nation, which is located in the Indian Ocean.

To find out more about the High Commissioner’s concerns, UN Radio’s Patrick Maigua spoke to Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson at the UN Human Rights office in Geneva.

A UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) will hold its latest round of public hearings in Washington, DC, this Thursday and Friday.

They follow previous hearings held in London, Seoul and Tokyo, where North Koreans who have left their homeland detailed the heart-wrenching violations they suffered in the country’s detention centres or even as far back as the Korean War in the early 1950s.

For the twenty-second time, delegates at the United Nations General Assembly voted to end the United States embargo against Cuba.

On Tuesday, the Assembly debated a resolution which called for “the necessity to end the economic, commercial and financial embargo” on the Caribbean island country.

188 Member States voted in favour of the resolution, with only the US and Israel voting against it. Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands abstained.

Jocelyne Sambira reports.

Duration: 2'20"