Youth Rights

Football and the Power to Strengthen Reproductive Rights

Mar 28th, 2022 | By
[Figure 1 - One of the girls teams lining up before their game]

By Joshua Mirondo, Transition Earth. Young people are diverse and so are their needs, therefore to get their attention, one needs to be considerate. In a community where reproductive health is often called immoral, it takes a lot of work to break these barriers. Many interventions have been made to ensure that young people have
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The Other Crisis: Making Sure Girls Return to School

May 20th, 2020 | By
girls-school-life-expectancy-ldc

By Suzanne York. It’s obvious that people all over the world have not just been inconvenienced by COVID-19, but many lives have been turned upside down and put at great risk due to a number of factors. Education is one such important sector where students are struggling to adjust.  It’s hard enough in the developed
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Climate Change and the Threat to the Rights of Girls

Feb 12th, 2020 | By
[Photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Escaping_child_marriage_(14521096630).jpg]

By Suzanne York. Imagine being a small-scale farmer in a developing country, trying to grow crops in challenging conditions that farmers have faced for generations.  Then increasingly severe climate impacts really start to throw things out of whack.  Droughts, floods, and erratic weather conditions threaten livelihoods and the ability to provide adequate amounts of food
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Educating Girls: A Major Solution for Climate Resiliency

Oct 11th, 2018 | By
day of the girl

By Suzanne York. At first glance, the recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on global warming may not seem to have much to do with the International Day of the Girl, observed on October 11th. But climate change has a lot to do with girls, and especially the rights of girls. For one
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Education Before Marriage: Give Girls a Fighting Chance

Mar 8th, 2018 | By
[photo: UNICEF/UN062031/Vishwanathan]

By Suzanne York. As the world recognizes International Women’s Day this March 8th, there is no shortage of important issues affecting women that should be brought to the table. As movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp have brought little discussed problems to the forefront, there is reason, at long last, to feel hope that “society”
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Is a Growing Population an Asset or Challenge?

Jul 24th, 2017 | By
Ugandan kids in Buhoma, near Bwindi Impenetrable National Park [photo credit: Suzanne York]

By Suzanne York. In Uganda, home to incredible biodiversity and some of the world’s friendliest people, the idea of a growing population is viewed by some as a positive, when actually the 1.2 million people added to the population every year is putting enormous pressure on people, communities and the environment. The facts speak for
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An Investment in Girls is an Investment for All

Jul 10th, 2016 | By
Jamila Zeyne, who is 20 years old, and who has been married since she was 13, poses for a photograph in her house as  part of a UNICEF photo project to show Girls Empowerment in Mareko, Ethiopia Saturday, Feb. 14, 2015. The project aims to document the hopes, dreams and aspirations of Ethiopian girls in different parts of the country. Jamila says: "“I got married because my father forced me to. I was given two options, either to get married or to be sent to the Arab countries to work. I am not happy because I wanted to study. If the government introduces night school in our area I will go back to learn. Early marriage is bad because when we get pregnant and want to deliver, it is very difficult for our bodies. We are too young managing a home is not easy".

By Suzanne York. July 11th is officially recognized as World Population Day, a day meant to raise awareness on the impacts of population growth on people and the environment. This year’s theme for World Population Day is “investing in teenage girls.” In much of the world today their needs are shunted to the back burner
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Youth Unemployment – A Ticking Time Bomb?

Mar 14th, 2016 | By
[Photo: http://zululandobserver.co.za]

By Suzanne York. If you are a parent or a teacher, you might be excused for occasionally thinking that there are too many young people. But it’s true that there are a lot of young men and women living right now, as noted in a recent op-ed in the New York Times by Somini Sengupta,
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Cooperatives Offer Solutions for Youth Unemployment

Apr 29th, 2015 | By
[photo credit: www.telecentre-europe.org]

By Kimberly Absher, guest youth blogger, www.howmany.org. A recent Guardian article said youth unemployment “is an issue set to destabilise fragile economies, become a breeding ground for extremism, and leave a generation permanently scarred.” Indeed, it is cause for concern when not only considering today’s out-of-work young people, but also the workforce of tomorrow. According to
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Sound the Alarm: Youth Sexual Health Crisis in America

Mar 11th, 2015 | By
[photo credit: http://www.soc.ucsb.edu]

By Kimberly Absher, guest youth blogger, www.howmany.org. After looking at sexual education challenges in South Africa and in the U.K., it seems appropriate to examine our sexual education picture in the United States. Currently there are no national standards for sexual education. Instead, the width and breadth of what students learn is determined on a state
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