UN development agency provides school aid to Burkina Faso AIDS orphans

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and its partners will this year provide school materials to 10,000 Burkina Faso children this year, many of whose parents died of AIDS.

Under an education assistance project launched two years ago by the French embassy in Ouagadougou, $145,000 has been raised through the UNDP from donors, including Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and local staff of the German Development Service.

The assistance is channelled through 72 community organizations in 25 provinces and is part of a wider initiative to build the capacity of such groups in technical and financial management and promote coordination of their activities, UNDP said.

Only about one third of children in Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest countries, are enrolled in primary school, and nearly two thirds of the population live in severe poverty, surviving on less than $1 a day. Meanwhile, 270,000 children under 15 have lost either one or both parents to AIDS.

UNDP Resident Representative Christian Lemaire described the project as a sign of the partners' support for government priorities set out in the national strategic framework for AIDS control, which strongly emphasizes the need for care and support of orphans and other vulnerable children.