About 65 per cent of schools surveyed were looted, occupied or damaged by bullets or shells, the agency said in a news release about the survey, which was carried out in August in 11 of the country’s 17 prefectures.

“A school is meant to be a safe space for teaching and learning, but in some areas there is nothing left,” said UNICEF Representative in CAR Souleymane Diabaté. “Without teachers, desks, textbooks – how can a child learn?”

Four out of five people said that fear of violence is the main reason students are reluctant to return to school. Almost half of the schools remain closed and students have lost an average of six months of schooling.

“Both the access and quality of primary education in the Central African Republic have severely deteriorated since the beginning of the crisis,” said Diabaté. “And if we do not act now, more children will lose the entire school year and are at risk of dropping out.”

UNICEF called on the CAR authorities to take concrete measures to support the permanent and safe return of all teachers and students to school.

Plagued by decades of instability and fighting, the CAR witnessed a resumption of violence last December when the Séléka rebel coalition launched a series of attacks. A peace agreement was reached in January, but the rebels again seized the capital, Bangui, in March, forcing President François Bozizé to flee.

There is now a transitional government, headed by Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye, entrusted with restoring law and order and paving the way for democratic elections. But armed clashes in the north-east have increased since the beginning of August, and the country is facing a dire humanitarian situation that affects the entire population of some 4.6 million.

UNICEF said almost 25,000 children affected by conflict are now in ‘catch-up classes’ to prepare for this year’s final exams, with an additional 40,000 children scheduled to re-start learning in the upcoming weeks.

Almost 20,000 students have received school supplies and schools have been received furniture which has already helped to re-open schools. UNICEF plans to support an additional 105,000 children to get back to their classrooms by the end of the year.

UNICEF’s 2013 emergency appeal of $11.5 million, issued before the crisis, has since tripled to $32 million. The agency has only received one third of the funding requested, and $21 million is urgently needed to provide education and emergency assistance to conflict-affected children and women in CAR.

The crisis that began last December has displaced more than 394,000 people within the country and sent another 64,000 people to neighbouring countries in search of refuge. Persistent insecurity, the absence of the rule of law and attacks against humanitarian personnel and assets continue to prevent life-saving assistance from reaching people in need, said Laerke.

However, UN humanitarian staff have been redeployed to five locations outside Bangui and mobile humanitarian teams are also on the ground and providing aid in Bossangoa, where there had been a recent flare-up in fighting between various armed groups.

Humanitarian partners have reached nearly 180,000 people with food assistance and nutrition programmes; 573,000 people have benefited from water and sanitation programmes; and more than 200,000 have received health support.

UNICEF said it will be able to procure and distribute urgently needed polio vaccines, and prevent the further spread of the virus across the Horn of Africa nation and into neighbouring countries with the $1.3 million provided by the Japanese Government.

“Lack of access to routine immunization in Somalia has created the largest known reservoir of unvaccinated children in a single geographic area in the world. The total number of Somali children who had never been vaccinated between 2008 and 2012 was estimated to reach a million,” says Sikander Khan, UNICEF Somalia Representative.

“The poliovirus in such a large reservoir has the potential to result in a catastrophic outbreak, the likes of which are beginning to be seen and as such constitutes an international emergency,” he added in a news release.

In May, a two-year-old girl from the capital, Mogadishu, became the first confirmed case of polio in Somalia in more than six years. The country had been polio-free since March 2007.

As of July, the virus has paralyzed 95 Somali children: 94 confirmed cases in South Central Zone, which includes Mogadishu, and a case in Somaliland. Another nine cases have also been reported in the Dadaab camp in Kenya – the largest refugee complex in the world.

With the help of UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), Somali communities have launched emergency vaccination campaigns to boost their low polio vaccination coverage. The country currently has the second lowest coverage in the world at 47 per cent, after Equatorial Guinea.

So far, polio vaccines were prepared for six immunization campaigns between May and August, and five rounds have already been carried out. However, vaccines for additional campaigns between September and December have not yet been secured.

More than 2.8 million children under the age of 10 are expected to benefit from Japan’s contribution, which will cover more than 5 million doses of oral polio vaccines for two rounds of immunization activities in the coming months.

UNICEF has been working to support partners and local communities to minimize the scale of this outbreak. However, it warned that frequent movement of people within and between Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan could transport the virus further from Somalia to the entire Horn of Africa.

Before the new outbreak, the worldwide number of polio cases had decreased by more than 99 per cent from 350,000 in 1988 to 223 cases in 2012 with active cases reported in only three endemic countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

“The outbreak in Somalia, if not controlled quickly, could jeopardize global efforts to wipe out polio once and for all,” UNICEF warned.

“Disturbing images of children taken during street protests indicate that, on some occasions, children have been deliberately used and put at risk as potential witnesses to or victims of violence,” Philippe Duamelle, UNICEF Representative in Egypt, said in a statement.

“Such actions can have a long-lasting and devastating physical and psychological impact on children,” he noted.

“We call on all Egyptians and political groups not to exploit children for political ends, and to protect them from any potential harm.”

The crisis in the country escalated earlier this month, resulting in the Egyptian military deposing President Mohamed Morsy amid widespread protests in which dozens of people were killed and wounded. The Constitution was then suspended and an interim Government set up.

Amid the political unrest in Egypt, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, have repeatedly called on authorities to ensure respect for the rule of law and international human rights standards.

They have also supported the right of all Egyptians to hold peaceful protests, while also urging all sides to act with maximum restraint.

A nutrition and mortality survey carried out by Mali’s Ministry of Health and its partners, including UNICEF, found that the rate of global acute malnutrition (GAM) is 13.5 per cent making it a “serious” nutrition situation according to UN classification.

The situation is even more worrying in the Bourem health district, where the rate of GAM is 17 per cent, exceeding the emergency threshold of 15 per cent set by the World Health Organization (WHO).

During the next six months, 22,730 children will be at risk for acute malnutrition, UNICEF warned in a news release.

“The nutrition situation in Gao deserves special attention. Action must be taken now so that children who can be saved are not left to die and so that new cases can be prevented,” David Gressly, the Humanitarian Action Coordinator for Mali, said during a visit to Gao yesterday.

Gao was among the areas affected by the fighting that broke out last year in northern Mali between Government forces and Tuareg rebels, after which radical Islamists seized control of the area. The crisis uprooted hundreds of thousands of civilians and led to a dire humanitarian crisis.

UNICEF pointed out that the high malnutrition rates are explained, in part, by the fact that the survey was conducted in May 2013, at the start of the hunger gap season when food supplies run out.

Also, the spike in malaria during the rainy reason has had an impact on children’s nutritional status. The negative impact of the recent conflict on populations’ financial wherewithal is another factor contributing to the severity of the situation, the agency said.

“The lives of many children are in jeopardy. They need immediate assistance,” said Françoise Ackermans, UNICEF Representative in Mali. “Treating children suffering from severe acute malnutrition is a priority for UNICEF. We are sparing no effort to assist each child suffering from malnutrition,” she added.

This year, more than 108,000 children under age five were admitted to nutrition rehabilitation units around the country with the assistance of the Government, UNICEF and humanitarian partners.

The nutrition survey will be conducted next in Timbuktu, in northern Mali, and is already underway in the south of the country. Results will allow for nutrition trends to be assessed to better evaluate needs and prioritize resource allocation.

UNICEF stated that $80 million is needed to meet nutritional needs throughout the country. To date, only a quarter of this funding has been secured. As of 22 July, the Consolidated Appeal for Mali has mobilized $142 million, 30 per cent of the $476 million sought.

“The humanitarian situation in Aleppo is desperate,” said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Yoka Brandt, who visited the Syrian capital, Damascus, last week. “Our goal is to reach children who most need our assistance, no matter where they are.”

The delivery, carried out by UNICEF, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and other UN agencies, consisted of a 15-truck convoy that travelled from Damascus to Aleppo. UNICEF’s supplies included diarrhoeal disease kits to treat 30,000 people, medical kits for 20,000 people, 2,000 family hygiene kits, cooking stoves, high energy biscuits and school supplies.

UNICEF also delivered five generators and eight water tanks that will provide safe drinking water to more than 1 million people in Aleppo. The installation of these generators has already begun, the agency said in a news release.

Aleppo, which has been difficult to access due to insecurity and fighting, has the highest number of affected people in the country – at least 2.4 million people. According to UNICEF, half of these are children.

“Humanitarian needs, especially for food, water and shelter, are very severe,” said Ahmedou Bahah, who accompanied the convoy as head of UNICEF’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene programme in Syria.

According to UNICEF, living conditions, especially in the worst affected areas, have become deplorable. Prices have tripled or quadrupled, and families are struggling to provide their children with basic supplies including bread, vegetables and fruits, milk, yogurt and eggs.

Since the beginning of the year, UNICEF has participated in 20 UN convoys, 15 of which were to areas controlled by opposition groups. Through these and other missions, UNICEF and its partners have provided 10 million people with access to safe drinking water, vaccinated 1.5 million children, enrolled more than 300,000 children in schools and supported more than 450 school clubs where children receive the support needed to overcome some of the horrors they have witnessed.

Since fighting began in March 2011 between the Syrian Government and opposition groups seeking to oust President Bashar Al-Assad as many as 100,000 people have been killed, almost 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries and a further 4 million have been internally displaced. In addition, at least 6.8 million Syrian require urgent humanitarian assistance.

With the approaching 2015 deadline to reach the eight anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said much progress has been made – including declining poverty rates, the near eradication of polio, increased immunizations, more girls attending school, improved access to clean water and nutrition, and more children surviving and thriving beyond their fifth birthdays than ever before.

“But these results are no excuse for rest,” Mr. Lake stressed in the report’s forward. “Our goal is to reach every child, everywhere, no matter how distant or remote, no matter what barriers stand in the way,” he added.

Among its successes, the agency highlights in its Our Story 2012 report the use of mobile phone texting to register births in Nigeria and Uganda, the lack of which in the past has prevented children in those countries from attending school and made them more vulnerable to trafficking and other dangers.

Similarly, this year’s report also highlights the use of a RapidSMS programme to quickly diagnose and treat HIV-infected infants in Zambia, cutting turnaround time for test result from 44 days to 26.

In addition, innovative partnerships, such as between UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), led to the creation of the Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children to improve access to life-saving health interventions for children under five years of age and women of childbearing age. These activities are in support of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Every Woman Every Child initiative.

In the report, the agency said it and its partners responded to 286 humanitarian situations in 79 countries last year. Among those, the Syrian conflict where UNICEF said it delivered safe water benefitting more than 100,000 people in refugee camps and among host communities, and winter supplies to more than 260,000 people in the country.

The UN agency also said it helped to provide access to uninterrupted education for nearly 80,000 children, provided psychosocial care for an estimated 47,000 children and supported measles vaccination for more than 1.4 million children.

“The organization remains both a world leader in the procurement of supplies for children and the world’s largest provider of vaccines to developing countries,” according to the report, which added that UNICEF’s procurement strategies and financing mechanisms last year generated savings of more than $197 million.

The report also notes that cash contributions to the UN agency rose eight per cent over the previous year, “underscoring donor trust in UNICEF’s ability to leverage its expertise, technical know-how, broad partnerships and global reach.”

UNICEF said it joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative last year, and expanded its public disclosure by releasing online internal audit reports, evaluations and country office annual reports.

The children were released to their families in the presence of senior Government officials as well as representatives from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the office of the UN Resident Coordinator in Myanmar.

By the terms of an action plan signed with the UN last year, the Myanmar Government has agreed to locate all children recruited by the Tatmadaw with a view to ensuring their unconditional release, and committed to discharging and facilitating their quick reintegration back into their families and their communities.

“We expect the Tatmadaw will now be in a position to speed up the release of all children,” said UN Resident Coordinator Ashok Nigam. “We are very happy for the 42 children and their families today but we must accelerate efforts so that many more children benefit from release.”

The action plan also includes commitments to allow UN monitoring teams to access military facilities and to training military personnel on how to better protect, respect and promote the rights of Myanmar’s children.

“All parties recognize this is about the future of Myanmar. No child should have to endure the hardship of being taken away from their families, friends, schools and communities,” said Mr. Nigam.

“Nothing justifies the recruitment of children in armed forces. An army is not a place for a child to grow up. We will continue working with the Myanmar Government and the Tatmadaw towards expanding access for UN monitoring teams, addressing identified systemic procedural weaknesses, and mobilizing the Myanmar public in support of ending this practice for the sake of their children and the whole country,” he added.

The UN Resident Coordinator’s Office and UNICEF are the co-chairs of the UN Country Task Force charged with facilitating Myanmar’s implementation of Security Council resolution 1612 in the country together with representatives from other members of the Task Force.

Adopted in 2005, resolution 1612 asked the Secretary-General to establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism to provide timely and reliable information on six grave children’s rights violations, including the recruitment and use of children in armed forces and armed groups.

The six grave violations monitored and reported are: killing or maiming of children; recruitment and use of children in armed forces and groups; attacks against schools or hospitals; rape or other grave sexual violence; abduction of children; and denial of humanitarian access for children.

In his recent report to the Council on children and armed conflict in Myanmar, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the fact that, while children are still being recruited into the Tatmadaw following the signing of the action plan, the number of new recruits have decreased.

“Through today’s discharge and by moving away from recruiting new children, the Myanmar Government and its armed forces continue to demonstrate their desire to end this deeply saddening practice,” said UNICEF Representative Bertrand Bainvel.

“The action plan continues to be a unique opportunity to once and for all ensure that the Tatmadaw is a child-free armed force and is removed from the annex of the Secretary-General’s report, which lists parties to the conflict that recruit and use children,” Mr. Bainvel added.

The Tatmadaw (together with its integrated border guard forces) is listed in Annex 1 of the Secretary-General’s report, alongside seven other non-State armed groups that are persistent perpetrators in Myanmar.

“As we extend our sympathy to the families of the victims, we would say in the strongest possible terms that there can be no justification for the deliberate targeting of children and those looking after them,” said UNICEF’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Manuel Fontaine.

According to media reports, Islamic militants belonging to the Boko Haram group attacked a boarding school in the north-eastern state of Yobe before dawn on Saturday, killing 29 students and one teacher.

Secondary schools in the state have reportedly now been closed until the start of the new academic term in September to allow state and federal Government officials, as well as community leaders, to work on ways to guarantee the safety of schools.

“UNICEF calls for those responsible to be brought to justice and for communities to demand that schools be considered as places of safety,” it stated in a news release.

The agency noted that, since 16 June, a total of 48 students and seven teachers have reportedly been killed in four attacks in the region.

Leila Zerrougui, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, voiced her deep concern at the recent spike in incidents affecting schools and children in the region and called on the Nigerian Government to investigate these “heinous” crimes and hold the perpetrators accountable.

She called on those responsible to refrain from any attacks directed at or in the vicinity of schools, and warned that the killing and maiming of children, as well as attacks on schools, teachers and school children are serious violations of international law.

“Children and young people are the makers of a future sustainable world, and, measures of their progress will also be the markers of that world,” said UNICEF’s Senior Adviser on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, Richard Morgan.

“Their learning, their nutritional growth, their safety and confidence, their creativity and ideas – underpinned by freedom from fear, as well as freedom from want – will be the markers of how decisively we are moving to a sustainable future for all.”

According to UNICEF, children represent approximately one-third of the world’s population, and their rights and participation as part of a sustainable future are already guided by an extensive range of international conventions, treaties, and other legal instruments – including the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In the position paper, UNICEF makes a direct link between what needs to be done for children today – particularly those most disadvantaged – and how this will affect the future of their countries.

The agency also outlines three key messages for achieving a world fit for children, which consist of recognizing that children can be a major drivers of sustainable development, children have the most to gain and the most to lose from success or failure of sustainable development measures, and children can and should be major participants in and contributors to a healthy, sustainable planet.

For example, preventing stunting – which currently affects come 165 million children under five – would help break the cycle of poverty and increase a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by at least two to three per cent every year, and save billions of dollars in healthcare costs and lost productivity.

Reducing children’s exposure to violence would also lessen their risk of transitioning into drug abuse, criminal, violent and other dangerous behaviours later in adolescence and in adult life. In addition, children are more vulnerable to environmental pollution as their bodies and brains are still developing, which should encourage countries to implement environmentally-friendly measures.

“The good news is that investing in children delivers big pay offs – for them, for their societies, and for the planet,” UNICEF said in a news release. “For example, a good quality education has major intergenerational impacts. A well-educated girl is likely to have greater personal earnings potential, be more likely to delay marriage and pregnancy and be more likely to access health service support, leading to lower rates of maternal mortality. Educated women tend to have fewer, healthier and more educated children.”

The paper also argues that empowering children and young people is important so they can be active participants and become effective guardians of a sustainable development world.

“Quality education for all is fundamental for a peaceful, democratic and productive society, and UNICEF commends the Ministry of Education for tangible achieved results,” said Carel de Rooy, the agency’s Libya Country Director.

The agreement was signed by Mr. del Rooy and the Minister of Education, Ali Abed, in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

“We are very pleased to respond to the needs and requests of the Libyan Government and sign this work plan so that this joint plan can be operationalized in the best interest of children and adolescents in Libya.”

The signing of the agreement will kick start action on various policies, including the development of an education management information system, validation of early learning development standards, and the promotion of early childhood care. It will also support teachers’ training, risk education and the establishment of inclusive education mechanisms in schools.

UNICEF has been an important partner of Libya’s Ministry of Education, supporting the first nationwide schools assessment after the revolution in 2011, promoting mine risk education, and training teachers in psychosocial support and positive discipline and classroom management as well as drafting the first standards for early childhood development.

Today’s agreement is a continuation of the initial humanitarian response in 2011, and the 2012 work plan signed for sustainable development cooperation between the Ministry of Education and UNICEF.

In a news release, UNICEF commended the steps taken by the Education Ministry to achieve an effective education system, but warned that there are still many challenges. The agency also reiterated its support, as well as that of development partners to support the Ministry to realize its goals.