The Fuerza Publica team are sworn to protect all children of Costa Rica and deliver teachings to first through fourth grade classrooms. Through the Pinta Seguro program, children are involved in fun activities while learning how to recognize unsafe adults and situations, contact appropriate adults, play in safe areas, promote social skills and self-protection measures, and safe activities at home and on the road.

To celebrate Costa Rica’s September children’s day event, Fuerza Publica officers visited La Suiza, a remote rural community in Turrialba and taught students about safety in the midst of potato sack races.

In addition to Pina Seguro, the Community Policing program bring family entertainment to children in impoverished communities. Officers with artistic and musical abilities are encouraged to facilitate the events.

The police force hopes to foster positive relationships between the local law enforcement and community. Local reporter said “for most of these children it was their first time meeting a police officer. This is exactly what Fuerza Publica wants: To let Costa Rica know that they are a friendly force sworn to protect all residents.”

According to the US Department of State, the overall criminal threat for Costa Rica’s capital San Jose is rated “High,” with a particular concern for violent crime. 

Creative Commons Love: Ingmar Zahorsky on Flickr.com

In the outskirts of Amman, a Syrian mother remembers when an explosion blew out the windows of her children’s classroom. She says “my girls stopped going to school after that. They are dying to go back to school, but even if they want to go, I must be reassured of their safety. There is no bus here. It’s a back road and anybody could snatch them. How can we be sure of their safety?”

Two Syrian women coping with their own traumatic experiences volunteered to run a makeshift kindergarden/primary school to support the many young children without a classroom. Without any formal education background, the two refuges are doing what they can with the little supplies offered. In regards to trauma, one teacher said “the children are slowly overcoming it” and “they are moving forward. In the beginning, if they heard an airplane they would all hide under the desks. In the beginning, I couldn’t stand in front of the windows, because I still was scared of coming under sniper fire.”

Meanwhile, Save the Children International collaborated with UNICEF to establish child-friendly spaces in Za’atari, the largest Jordanian refugee camp that currently houses 120,000 refugees; half are children and the number is still growing. Child protector advisor, Naima Chohan, reports that some children are grappling with intense psychological problems, manifesting as aggressive behavior and recurrent nightmares. Others have a “psychogenic muteness or deafness, or psychosomatic symptoms, such as pain in their bodies.”

Still, Naima says they generally see improvements and that “one girl would not speak, her parents thought she was dumb. Gradually she started making sounds and small words.” As a result of their efforts, some of these children are now beginning to take classes and make friends.

Naima’s colleague Ghandi Al Bakkar explains “we are committed, and addicted, to changing children’s lives and making them better. We can’t turn our backs on them.”

In Mafriq, Jordanian Al-Rubaa Bent school is attempting to find solutions and reportedly operates two separate shifts; Jordanian children in the morning and Syrian children in the afternoon. The average student population has doubled to 60 students per class, despite limited educational resources and an education barrier between Syrian and Jordanian curriculum. Reporter Jamie Francis said “some of the girls are doing better than others but they all want the world to know that they still have dreams.”

Creative Commons Love: European Commissioner DG ECHO on Flickr.com

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced a series of liberalizing reforms giving long anticipated overtures to the country’s Kurdish minorities. Students enrolled in private schools will now be permitted to receive teachings in their native language, while another reform will remove Turkey’s forced nationalist student pledge from primary and middle school classrooms.

Additional changes will lift the ban that prohibits public servants from wearing head-scarves – with the exception of judges, prosecutors, police officers and army members. Headscarved women will also be allowed to work as civil servants and become parliamentarians, and the 80 year long ban of Kurdish letters (q, w and x) will be removed.

The democratization package follows decades of demands from the Kurdish, who are estimated to form 20% of the country’s total population. The concessions aim to continue the year-long peace process between the government and Kurdish rebels. According to Prime Minister Erdogan, the changes are “not a first and will not be the last package of such reforms” and “Turkey is progressing irreversibly toward democracy. This package is a fundamental and historic phase of this progress.” Erdogan also suggested lowering the national voting threshold for electing political parties for parliament, making it possible for pro-Kurdish and other minority parties to qualify.

Akif Wan, member of the Kurdistan National Congress, said “we are disappointed [because] the Kurdish side has not been involved in the preparation of this package.” The Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) describe the reforms as “falling short” and that Erdogan failed to address other pressing minority issues.

Since September 2012, Turkish parliament allowed Kurdish language courses as a foreign language elective in state schools, but most oftentimes lacked competent teachers and state support. Turkey’s state schools will still not offer general Kurdish education and will only be accessible in private institutions.

Korey Caliskan, a political scientist at Istanbul’s Bosporus University, said “offering this only to children of the rich is not a step towards more equality in Turkey, but towards greater inequality.”

Creative Commons Love: Bunyamin Salman on Flickr.com

“Five million infants and five million mothers in marginalized communities can receive better access to health, nutrition, water and sanitation services. And 7 million more children can stay in school and receive a quality education,” explained UNICEF’s Executive Director Anthony Lake.

€39.5 million will be allocated to curtail infant and mother morality and malnutrition rates in 13 states across India. A second portion of €20.7 million will fund education programs and a government plan aimed at providing safe environments for children living in difficult circumstances.

IKEA Foundation CEO Pat Heggenes said “IKEA Foundation believes all children deserve a quality education and a healthy start in life, so we are providing this significant grant of €60 million to UNICEF to help develop innovative models designed to improve education and access to vital health services for millions of children and their families in India.”

According to UNICEF reports, India accounts for 38% of the chronically undernourished children in the world. This disparity is due to limited access to quality health care services and adequate nutrition, water and sanitation services for young children and mothers. Additionally, over 80 million Indian children drop out of school before reaching their ninth schooling year.

The Swedish furniture company’s IKEA Foundation is UNICEF’s largest global corporate donor; total investments in UNICEF’s India programs are currently at €158 million. Since the beginning of their partnership in 2002, the IKEA Foundation has aided over 74 million people living in 15 states in India. 

Creative Commons Love: Mitwa AV on Flickr.com

Kepler’s revolutionary project provides open sourced and online content from prestigious Western universities, on-site classroom instruction, and an associate degree from Southern New Hampshire University’s competency-based program, College for America. Kepler’s 10 year plan is intended to reach up to 100,000 students through a network of replicated programs in the developing world.

50 out of 2,696 students who applied were chosen to pilot the program. The program is currently free for all students and hopes to keep tuition below $1,000 after expending the anonymously donated start-up funding. The few universities in Rwanda require a tuition that runs between $1,500 and $2,000 a year – about three times the average annual income.

According to the World Bank, only 6.6% of college-aged Rwandans were enrolled in universities in 2011. Kepler’s website wrote, “progressive countries like Rwanda have achieved incredible growth by building knowledge rather than oil refineries or diamond mine. But without the institutions to train their home-grown talent, true knowledge economies remain out of reach. Kepler is specifically designed for this role: training a new generation of creators and builders for the developing world. Kepler’s pilot campus in Rwanda is built to deliver top academic and career outcomes at a price that is affordable to anyone with the talent and determination to take part.”

International audiences are optimistic, emphasizing the program’s potential to serve as an example for educators using MOOC based curriculum. Paul J. LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, said their partnership with Kepler will allow the institution to “test the waters for what we think might grow, “and “the idea was to work with partners that could be part of the student’s individual learning ecosystem, and for many adults that might mean a range of community-based organizations. We see the Kepler pilot in that light, and we love their mission.”

Creative Commons Love: Graham Holliday on Flickr.com

President Rafael Correa signed the agreement with 500 members of the Waorani community who were representing the 48 tribes that form the indigenous group.

The decision settled long running protests implicating the government in conspiracies with international companies in violation of the constitution and Ecuadorian citizens. Local and international organizations also stress that the decision will devastate one of Ecuador’s most biodiverse areas. In response, Mr Correa explained that the country is in desperate need for the difficult investment and stringent environmental regulations will underlie the drilling.

According to the agreement, international donors would contribute $3.6 billion to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for education, health care, and other social programs in exchange for drilling in the park. The oil extraction is expected to generate over $7 billion in revenue over a ten year period.

Biodiversity Commission of the Ecuadorian National Assembly approved a report announcing Yasuni a national interest. It will be voted on by Congress this September.

Leaders from the Waorani community spoke with the President prior to the decision and agreed on the necessity of the investment. Jofre Poma, mayor of Lago Agrio, said “we want development, we want progress. We need healthcare, quality of life, schools, roads, drinking water.”

Anita Rivas, mayor of The Coca, requested that educational facilities be built from the oil revenue and said, “We lack basic services. More than 70 thousand people have no water. Hopefully, now that the President is looking at the Amazon, these works are built for the community.”

According to UNICEF’s 2011 annual report and Ecuador’s Observatory for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (ODNA), 33% of indigenous youth ages 15-17 drop out of schools, compared to 24% of the national average. In 2009, indigenous children between the ages 5 and 17 were reported three times more likely to be involved in the labor market than Ecuadorian children of mixed descent. The report stresses that additional efforts need to be made by training bilingual teachers and implementing education models based in indigenous cultures. 

 Creative Commons Love: Sara and Tzunki on Flickr.com

Valeria de Velasco, minister for the protection of victims of violence in the state government, explains, “it is in search of a new culture, one of non-violence, that has to come from our children. It is a work of transformation and of cultural transformation. Toy guns don’t kill, but they symbolize an attitude.”

Beginning in 2014, any shop selling toy or replica guns will face a fee of 5,000 – 100,000 real (2,245 – 44,907 USD) and will be closed for thirty days or lose their trading license. The Brazilian territory, which includes the capital city Brasilia, will be the first region in Latin America to enforce the ban.

Out of Brazil’s population of 200 million, 43,000 violent deaths were recorded last year; 73% of these from firearms. Within the past two months, five cases of entire families being murdered were reported. Additionally, the Brazilian Centre for Latin-American Studies reports that Brazil’s homicide rate rose from 24.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1996 to 27.1 per 100,000 in 2011.

11 schools in Ceilandia, the most violent city within Brazil’s Federal District, were first to pilot the campaign. Students were encouraged to create anti-violence designs and trade toy guns for books; 502 toy weapons were traded during the campaign. De Celasco said “this intervention enforced the importance of this law, how children assimilate new concepts and adopt them as theirs. Children are going to take this discussion to schools, to their families and to the community in general.”

Parents are reportedly highly supportive of the initiative. Neido do Nascimento, mother of three children in Ceilandia said “I think it’s marvelous. This law should have been made before. We lost a lot of time. We lost a lot of lives.”

Creative Commons Love: Gustavo Gomes on Flickr.com

According to Mukherjee, India’s higher education institutions were the best in the world for 1,800 years–from the 6th century BC to the 12th century AD. He said “I don’t find any reason why India cannot go back to dominating the higher education scene. We have talent, capacity and dedicated teachers who can inspire and who can rekindle the interests in the minds of students. All these elements have to be properly coordinated and integrated to have a high ranking and occupy our rightful place in academic excellence.”

Emphasizing the importance of adapting with worldwide development, Mukherjee said India’s 12th Five Year Plan for economic growth will focus on expanding and funding the education sector. India’s Right to Education Act of 2009, which gives free compulsory education to all children ages 6-14, was also marked as a success for the country, but now the efforts must be focused on “imparting the right education.”

According to Mukherjee, “education has to create responsible, innovative, analytical and compassionate citizens. It has to respond positively to the change in society” and that a university should be a “temple of learning, humanism, tolerance and balanced reasoning.”

There are currently 659 higher educational institutions and 33,000 colleges in India. 18 million students are enrolled in higher education and is expected to reach 29 million by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan.

The President continued to emphasize that achieving higher standards of teaching and research will expand intellectual possibilities and advance developing technologies. These innovations should in turn support the quality of life in the country’s poorest areas.

Mukherjee concluded by stressing to the university audience “as students, you have had the benefit of progressive education system. As you now enter a stage where you can give back to the society, make your contributions and make it count. India is an aspiring nation. We can reach the zenith but it requires the sacrifices of all. It is your duty to take our country forward. Do all that is necessary to realize our country’s goal.”

Creative Commons Love: World Economic Forum on Flickr.com

The results indicate that currently 168 million children worldwide are involved in child labor; almost 11% of the child population as a whole. 85 million of these children are working in hazardous conditions directly jeopardizing their health, safety and moral development. The ILO aims to eliminate the worst forms of child labor by 2016.

Despite the reduction of worldwide child labor, the ILO says “the progress is still too slow and its pace needs to pick up if the world community is going to come anywhere near to meeting the 2016 goal which it aims to achieve.”

The largest number of child laborers are based in the Pacific regions and Asia at almost 77.7 million, while in Sub-Saharan Africa 59 million children (one out of five ) are currently involved in underage work. 73 million children ages 5-11 years accounts for the largest age group of child workers; 43% of the total child labor population. The report also details that poorer countries have the highest incidence of child labor, but in absolute terms, middle-income countries are host to the largest number of child laborers.

The ILO contends that “relying on national income growth alone will not be sufficient to eliminate the child labor of what is still far too large a number of children. Rather, there is a need for an active policy response addressing the entire range of social and economic factors leading to children’s involvement in child labor – including family and child poverty.”

Child – based organizations argue that protecting children from underage employment is still a tremendous challenge in countries where parents depend upon an income generated by their children, especially in non-formal and family based work settings.

Save the Children‘s director in Bangladesh, Michael McGrath, explains that “employers just don’t consider the welfare of children. They think they are doing a good thing, the parents send the children and they get food, a warm place to stay. We say it’s not enough, they need to treat them with dignity and educate them.”

The ILO will facilitate the Global Conference on Child Labor this October to discuss future strategies.

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According to Sasha Rasic, Deputy Minister of Kosovo’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the issue of human trafficking is the government’s number one concern. Mr Rasic explains, “the priority of MIA and the whole government is fighting for the prevention of this phenomenon. Kosovo has moved with determination towards Europe and during this road we must face all challenges and one of those undoubtedly is respect of human rights and preservation of human dignity for all.”

A 2012 assessment organized by the U.S. Department of State revealed that the government of Kosovo has not fully complied with the UN’s minimum standards for prosecuting trafficking cases. As a result, Kosovo’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Bajram Rexhepi, has announced the approval of a new law that intends to meet the legal standards set by the European Union in punishing the guilty and in preventing human trafficking.

“Through this law we aim to implement legal provisions which give rights, obligations and responsibilities to local competent authorities, not only in prevention and fighting trafficking in human beings, but also with special focus protection of victims of trafficking” said Mr Rexhepi.

According to Mr Rexhapi, last year’s human trafficking rate rose 18% compared to previous years. In 2013, 150 people were arrested while 48 victims have been placed under protection.

In lieu of the campaign, students and young adults of Kosovo made a “human circle against trafficking with human beings.” The circle symbolizes that a community working together can prevent the exploitation of women and children. 

Creative Commons Love: Hanna Nikkanen on Flickr.com