07.19.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:37 pm by nadia
Illiterate girls marry as early as 11 years old and may have seven children before age 18.
Girls who go to school marry later, practice greater restraint in spacing births and have an average of 50% fewer children.
Each additional year of schooling for a mother results in a 5-10 percent decrease in mortality among her children.
Two out of every three children in the world who do not attend primary school are girls. Half of all women in developing countries are unable to read and write.
Girls’ education has been shown to have multiplier effects in other areas as well.
A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute concluded that 44% of the reduction in child malnutrition between 1970 and 1995 is attributable to increases in women’s education.
Experience has shown, over and over again, that investments in girls’ education translate directly and quickly into better nutrition for the whole family, better health care, declining fertility, poverty reduction and better overall economic performance.” – From ‘We the Peoples’, the Millennium Report of the UN Secretary-General.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 3:36 pm by nadia
Children without primary caregivers are deprived of their first source of protection. This can be a permanent or temporary situation, ranging from children who have been separated from their families for many reasons, abandoned, to those who have been removed by the state from parental care, to those who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS (estimated at 13.4 million children). At any given time, millions of children around the world are without primary caregivers in institutions including boarding schools, hospitals, orphanages, psychiatric units, prisons and detention centers. Separation from parents and family is usually detrimental to the overall well-being and development of a child. In addition, placement in institutions is known to carry risks. Involuntary separation from both family and community protection, greatly increases a child’s risk of exposure to violence, physical abuse and even death. Children who survive often face malnutrition, illness, physical and mental trauma, and stunted cognitive and emotional development.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 3:36 pm by nadia
Providing a nutritious meal at school is a simple but concrete way to give poor children a chance to learn and thrive. Who can focus with an empty stomach?
Such initiative is a way to attract children to attend and encourage reluctant parents/guardians to send them to school.
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07.18.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:57 pm by nadia
Prison education is a challenge for Moroccan officials
19/02/2007
Morocco has enlisted the help of a UN official to deal with prison education options in the country. Moroccan prisoners are offered the opportunity to learn a trade or continue their education.
By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat—19/02/07
Morocco has recruited the help of a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) expert to help address the issue of prison education, part of efforts to educate and reintegrate prisoners into society.
Marc De Mayer, an expert from UNESCO’s International Institute in Hamburg, Germany, arrived in Morocco last week. His recommendation was to view requirements for prison education the same as those for education in ordinary schools. He explained that the responsibility for dealing with prisons lies with the state, which must make preparations for what happens when prisoners leave.
Morocco’s prison population is 80,000 spread over 59 prisons, many are overcrowded.
De Mayer believes the most important thing is not to educate prisoners but to get them to prepare themselves for their own social reintegration. Improving conditions should be used by teachers as motivation for learning, and to make their prison stay more bearable. He also advocated the creation of libraries that should be a forum for meeting and exchange between teachers and prisoners.
Assia El Ouadie, a member of the Mohammed VI Foundation for the reintegration of prisoners, believes that educating prisoners is an urgent task. She says that all difficulties regarding vocational training in prisons have now been overcome and it is in the area of continuing education that a number of problems have now arisen.
Prisoners in Morocco have the options to continue their education and receive high school or university diplomas, or learn a trade. Since 2001, 30,000 inmates have taken advantage of the educational options.
Jamal Khellaf, the director of school affairs, co-ordination and interdisciplinary studies, told Magharebia that the prison population is so mobile that it is proving difficult to adapt programmes to their needs. He said that the Ministry of Education has been tackling the issue for the last two years in partnership with the prison administration directorate. A small group of ministries has been working on improve conditions for them, such as availability of textbooks and sports equipment.
Their latest initiative is to plan activities to respond to the needs of younger prisoners.
“We have realised that prisoners cannot receive the same education as other people. It’s simply not possible. We want our efforts to remain selective and specific,” Khellaf said.
Mohamed Abdennabaoui, the head of prison administration, hopes that Moroccans will change their attitudes towards prisoners to facilitate their education and reintegration into society. He recognises that there is still a long way to go, but welcomes the new role prisons have taken on over the last few years of training prisoners to give them the same opportunities as other people.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6:53 pm by nadia
26/11/2006
UN Special Rapporteur for the right to education Vernor Munoz will be in Morocco from Monday (November 27th) to December 5th at the invitation of the Moroccan government. Munoz will review the progress of the education system reform in the country and the implementation of the National Charter for Education and Training, according to the Geneva-based Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The access to education and the quality of teaching for the girls, underprivileged and handicapped children are among the issues to be examined. (MAP)
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6:51 pm by nadia
Literacy education up in Morocco,
By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat – 17/07/2007
Recent Ministry of Education data show that more than 709,000 Moroccans have received training from national literacy programmes, an increase of nearly 54,000 over the previous year.
Enrollment in Morocco’s literacy education programmes is on the rise. According to recent data from the Ministry of National Education’s Literacy Department, the number of people benefitting from literacy programmes rose this year to 709,155 — an increase of nearly 54,000 over the previous year. Children from the informal education sector accounted for 190,941 of the participants. Academic year 2006-7 has had richer success than previous years because it saw the introduction of a number of key measures, notably the publication of teaching manuals specific to the literacy programmes and the creation of CD-ROM teaching aids to combat illiteracy.
In the past, the pace of literacy growth was a slow one. But lately, we have been gathering speed,” said Secretary of State for Literacy and Informal Education Anis Birou at the end-of-year ceremony on Thursday, July 12th. ” In fact, the total number of beneficiaries since the creation of the State Secretariat in charge of this project now sits around two million, six hundred thousand, surpassing by half a million the number benefiting in the twenty years leading up to the programme launch.”
He appealed to every citizen to encourage literacy programmes, and also saluted the efforts of civil society, which provides teaching to 43.8% of the beneficiaries. As of this year there are more than 750 independent organisations involved in literacy education, some of them international groups. Thanks to the collective efforts of these organisations, many have learned to read and write.
Imane Jbili is one such beneficiary. “I left school five years ago because my parents couldn’t afford for me to stay, but I was able to return this year to the non-formal education program and I am learning a trade, jewelry-making,” she said.
Even school pupils are getting involved in spreading awareness amongst their parents and others who might benefit, particularly on the outskirts of cities and in rural areas. Ali Maarouf helped a friend to return to school, and he talks proudly of his initiative. “I was very insistent that my friend come back to study. He was reluctant. But I did all I could to convince him and to help him catch up. I am happy now that he has succeeded,” he exclaimed.
Spurred on by children, a number of adults who have benefited from the literacy drive expressed their sense of satisfaction. Nora Charaf, 42, learned to read and write over a period of two years. “Now, I understand a lot of things. I am no longer ashamed of being illiterate. I feel that I have become someone,” she said.
Rachid Salimi, a teacher, points out that although many children benefit from the literacy classes, there are still millions of illiterate Moroccans. The current illiteracy rate for the Moroccan population aged 10 and over is 38.45%. “We must redouble our efforts to defeat this scourge,” he said.
For some years now, a programme has been underway to encourage children to stay in school. Support centres have been established inside schools to identify challenges children face, as well as any problems that might hamper the literacy initiative itself.
This content was commissioned for Magharebia.com.
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07.17.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:08 pm by nadia
Morocco: Childhood Being Stolen
Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
15 July 2007
Posted to the web 16 July 2007
Amina Barakat
Rabat
Habiba Hamrouch describes her daughter, Sanaa, as her “revenge” — her blow against the mixture of abuse, tradition and indifference that enables thousands of girls to be exploited as domestic servants in Morocco.
The law in this North African country forbids children below the age of 15 from being employed.
But this has not stopped households from taking on girls as young as five, and subjecting many to grueling hours and mistreatment of various forms when their work is not considered good enough, as well as sexual abuse. In addition, the girls are often denied education, a proper diet and medical care.
“I saw all sorts of things after I was placed with a family as a domestic in 1990,” Hamrouch said. “This is a very bad memory I was just eight when I started working.”
The fate of her two sisters was no better, she added, as they were also found positions as servants: “My mother, a woman who was submissive (towards her husband), could do nothing except cry in silence, as we were really in need ”
“I hated my father for what he did with me — a poor little servant who didn’t have anything.”
Now aged 22, married and the mother of two — a daughter of 10 and a two-year-old son — Hamrouch is doing everything to ensure that her own children experience a different life.
“My little Sanaa is my revenge, I will do everything for her to study (and) I attend literacy classes to be able to ensure a future for my children,” she said. Her daughter is about to graduate to the next grade with a good average.
Hafida Hosman*, 18, was also able to escape a life of exploitation, thanks to a neighbour.
“I was 14 when my mother gave me to a rich family in Rabat (the capital); their son, a teenager of 16 or 17, did everything to take advantage of me when his parents were away (and) I could say nothing about it,” she told IPS.
“Even his cousin, a dreadful little snot, pinched my bottom each time that he came to the house. They were so spoiled that no-one would believe me they were the masters and allowed to do anything.”
With mention of sexual harassment considered taboo in Morocco, young girls are loathe to come forward in the instances when they are abused in this way. And, simply running away can prove difficult: all too many girls face obstacles to doing so such as a lack funds, or the fear of being reported to the police by their employers.
“It’s scandalous to see young girls of school age placed as servants; their place is on the school benches with a book between their hands, and not a floor cloth or a broom that is much bigger than them,” said Fouzia Tawil, an activist from the Association for the Defence of Women and Children’s Rights, based in Casablanca, the economic capital.
“Between the dishes, the housework and the care of children, their childhood is stolen,” she told IPS.
The meagre payment for this stolen youth is typically given to the girls’ parents. “I never saw money for all the time that I worked, until the age of 17,” said Habiba.
A government survey carried out in 2001 with the support of the United Nations Children’s Fund found there were some 22,000 girls younger than 18 working as domestics in big Moroccan cities such as Rabat and Casablanca (these are the most recent figures on this issue).
About 59 percent were younger than 15, all from poor and illiterate backgrounds.
The exploitation of young girls employed as servants has also been investigated by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which issued a report two years ago condemning this mistreatment, ‘Inside the Home, Outside the Law: Abuse of Child Domestic Workers in Morocco’.
Of the child servants interviewed for the study, Human Rights Watch noted that most worked 14 to 18 continuous hours a day, every day of the week, for between four and eleven cents an hour: “In comparison, Morocco’s minimum wage for other forms of non-agricultural work is $1.07 per hour, and working hours are limited to forty-four hours per week and ten hours per day.”
The report indicated that Morocco has “one of the highest rates of child labor in the Middle East and North Africa, and one of the lowest rates of school attendance for working children outside of sub-Saharan Africa.”
It further noted that “Police, prosecutors, and judges rarely enforce Penal Code provisions on child abuse or on forced labor in cases involving child domestics, and parents are rarely willing to press for time-consuming prosecutions that will subject their daughters to stigma without providing any direct benefit to them.”
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07.11.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:37 am by nadia
About 37 percent of all child deaths occur during the neonatal period, or the first 28 days of life. The perinatal period encompassing birth and the first week of life is the most risky time of all. Twenty-two percent of all child deaths occur during this period, and 98 percent of these deaths take place in developing countries. The leading causes of death for the nearly 4 million infants who die within their first month include severe infection, birth asphyxia, low birth weight and complications of prematurity, and tetanus. Tetanus is a ubiquitous bacterium that kills about 200,000 newborns and 30,000 mothers a year. The infant may become infected through cutting the umbilical cord with an unsterile instrument. Incomplete records of vital statistics and underreporting of deaths among newborns are common, suggesting that deaths during the perinatal period may actually be much higher.
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