Annotation. The State of the World's Children 2009 examines critical issues in maternal and neonatal health. It explains why support for the rights of women and children is a prerequisite for improving maternal and newborn health, emphasizes the need to establish effective continua of care and outlines ways to strengthen health systems.

The book provides contributions of adults and adolescent who gave their perspectives on the challenges adolescents face today in protection, education, health and participation.

On 20 November 2009, the global community celebrates the 20th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the unique document that sets international standards for the care, treatment and protection of all individuals below age 18. To celebrate this landmark, the United Nations Children's Fund is dedicating a special edition of its flagship report The State of the World's Children to examining the Convention's evolution, progress achieved on child rights, challenges remaining, and actions to be taken to ensure that its promise becomes a reality for all children.

Having a child remains one of the biggest health risks for women worldwide. Fifteen hundred women die every day while giving birth. That's a half a million mothers every year. UNICEF's flagship publication, The State of the World's Children 2009, addresses maternal mortality, one of the most intractable problems for development work.The difference in pregnancy risk between women in developing countries and their peers in the industrialised world is often termed the greatest health divide in the world. A woman in Niger has a one in seven chance of dying during the course of her lifetime from complications during pregnancy or delivery. That's in stark contrast to the risk for mothers in America, where it's one in 4,800 or in Ireland, where it's just one in 48,000. Addressing that gap is a multidisciplinary challenge, requiring an emphasis on education, human resources, community involvement and social equality. At a minimum, women must be guaranteed antenatal care, skilled birth attendants and emergency obstetrics, and postpartum care. These essential interventions will only be guaranteed within the context of improved education and the abolition of discrimination.

One in every seven children is disabled. Children with disabilities are among the most likely to be marginalized, poor and vulnerable. UNICEF is committed to improving the lives of children, particularly those who face the greatest disadvantages. The report will investigate the web of barriers disabled children face: discrimination, harmful norms and the lack of accurate information. The report will analyse and provide good-practice guidance on: inclusive health and education; prevention; nutrition; protection from violence, exploitation and abuse; emergency response; institutionalization; and the role of appropriate technology and infrastructure

The 2006 edition of UNICEF's annual report focuses on the millions of children who are most in need of access to essential education, health and protection services, but who are also the hardest to reach and often overlooked by current development programmes. These include children living in the poorest countries and most deprived communities within countries, children who face discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity or disability, children caught up in armed conflicts or affected by HIV/AIDS, children who lack a formal identity and who suffer from abuse and exploitation. The report examines the factors which result in their exclusion from current child development programmes and services, and highlights the policy options and actions required to address these challenges, in order to ensure all children benefit from the progress being made to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Topics discussed include: income disparities and child survival, the marginalisation of Roma communities and their children, disability issues, children and HIV/AIDS, children living on the streets, early marriages, child labour, child protection and child rights.

Building from the history of inequality in education up to current problems, this text posits viewpoints on how to cultivate humanistic leaders in education to best benefit underserved children around the world. Among perspectives examined are economic, cultural, and political circumstances that benefit some and harm others, creating educational inequality. To illustrate the work that must be done, this book connects vignettes of compelling school issues to educational philosophies, e.g., Makiguchi’s work, to bridge the theoretical and the practical and pose real solutions.

Donna Seto investigates why children born of wartime sexual violence are rarely included in post-conflict processes of reconciliation and recovery. The focus on children born of wartime sexual violence questions the framework of understanding war and recognizes that certain individuals are often forgotten or neglected. This book considers how children are neglected sites for the reproduction of global norms. It approaches this topic through an interdisciplinary perspective that questions how silence surrounding the issue of wartime sexual violence has prevented justice for children born of war from being achieved. In considering this, Seto examines how the theories and practices of mainstream International Relations (IR) can silence the experiences of war rape survivors and children born of wartime sexual violence and explores the theoretical frameworks within IR and the institutional structures that uphold protection regimes for children and women.

This book examines how an understanding of social-cultural and resource dynamics can inform the development of context-sensitive approaches to the early education and care of young deaf children, and the support of their caregivers. The authors investigate what it takes to facilitate deaf children's progress through early childhood, focusing on language, communication, learning, and well-being in the sub-Saharan African context of Ghana. They provide a review and critical discussion of the existing knowledge base surrounding early childhood deaf education and examine traditional and contemporary perspectives on childhood deafness and caregiving that are meaningful to the African early childhood deaf education landscape. The book draws on the knowledge and understanding developed through a collaborative UK-Ghana research project that examined the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) of young deaf children in Ghana. Examples from this project bring to life the issues surrounding caregiving, childhood deafness and early support in sub-Saharan Africa and advances voices from this context. As a co-authored text and collaboration between UK and Ghana researchers the work brings a new and context sensitive contribution to the examination of early education programming for young deaf children, addresses gaps in the global ECCE research, and shifts the traditional flow of knowledge to open the potential of south-north illumination and learning.