Bundestag backs law that will fine parents up to €2,500 if children are not inoculated
Germany’s parliament has voted to make measles vaccinations compulsory for children, in response to a global rise in cases of the disease.
Parents who refuse to get their children inoculated face fines of up to €2,500 (£2,140) and a likely ban from nursery or school.
Continue reading...UNHCR says children arriving in UK whose age is disputed likely to be denied services
Age disputes are having a “devastating impact” on unaccompanied and separated refugee or asylum seeker children arriving in the UK, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has warned.
Evidence from an assessment conducted by the UNHCR found disputes over a refugee or asylum seeker’s age impeded and delayed access to services and environments that can assist integration.
Continue reading...Unicef report finds poorest children at greatest risk, while price of healthy food in rich nations drives food poverty
At least one in three children under five are either undernourished or overweight, and one in two lack essential vitamins and nutrients, the UN children’s agency has warned.
The Unicef report laid bare the alarming rate at which poor diets and a “failing” food system are damaging children, saying that “millions are eating too little of what they need and millions are eating too much of what they don’t need: poor diets are now the main risk factor for the global burden of disease”.
Continue reading...I’m walking through the security cordon that leads into Kadhimiyah, one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites. I’m in a queue, along with dozens of pilgrims who have come from all over the world to pay their respects to the shrine of Imam Kadhim. At the gate, a female security guard pats me down and looks into my handbag, a reminder that the story I’m reporting on here isn’t going to be easy.
As I walk around the market stalls surrounding the shrine, I notice the many “marriage offices” dotted around the mosque, which are licensed to perform Sharia marriages. I’d received tips that some clerics here were performing short-term mutaa [pleasure] marriages, a practice – illegal under Iraqi law – whereby a men can pay for a temporary wife, with the officiating cleric receiving a cut.
Continue reading...C-section babies pick up more hospital bacteria than those born vaginally, research shows
Babies born by caesarean section have different gut bacteria to those delivered vaginally, the most comprehensive study to date on the baby microbiome has found.
The study showed that babies born vaginally pick up most of their initial dose of bacteria from their mother, while C-section babies have more bugs linked to hospital environments, including strains that demonstrate antimicrobial resistance. The findings could explain the higher prevalence of asthma, allergies and other immune conditions in babies born by caesarean.
Continue reading...A recent report found parents are happier when their children leave home – but why wait? Four experts share their tips on putting the fun back into family, at every age
Could we go down in history as the generation that forgot to enjoy our kids? It’s a shocking indictment, but the evidence is mounting: recent research found that parents become happier when their children have left home, while another study earlier this year found that working mothers with two children are 40% more stressed than anyone else. Meanwhile, Australian academics report that the pressures on parents mount after a second child, and that there are accompanying deteriorations in parents’ mental health.
And, as a two-year-old could probably tell you, stressed-out, unhappy parents raise stressed-out, unhappy offspring. The UK’s annual Good Childhood report, out last month, found there are more unhappy youngsters now than at any point in the past decade.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Current system for asylum-seeking minors set to end the day after UK leaves EU
The Home Office is preparing to end the current system of family reunification for asylum-seeking children if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the Guardian has learned.
The government has privately briefed the UN refugee agency UNHCR and other NGOs that open cases may be able to progress, but a no-deal Brexit would mean no new applications after 1 November from asylum-seeking children to be reunited with relatives living in the UK. Even if there is a deal, the future of family reunion is not certain.
Continue reading...Children tell charity workers of being knocked into the water as attempts to reach UK from France increase
Smugglers are cramming up to 30 people on to small boats to cross the Channel from France to the UK, and children have been among those who have recently fallen overboard, campaigners have revealed.
As crossing attempts surge at the close of summer amid rumours that Brexit will mean tighter border restrictions, criminal gangs are loading inflatable boats up to five times their capacity. Previously, people smugglers would put about eight passengers on each vessel.
Continue reading...From bottle feeding infants in the chamber to a playground on the front lawn, speaker Trevor Mallard has welcomed infants into the corridors of power
Trevor Mallard thought his days nursing babies might be over when he became speaker of New Zealand’s parliament in late 2017.
But the grandfather who has raised three children of his own has overseen a baby boom in the Beehive – as the most recognisable building in the parliamentary complex is known – and has become determined to make life easier for parents in the country’s halls of power.
Continue reading...The G7 thought it had solved Africa’s problems, but rising child poverty is a ticking time bomb
Time was when Africa dominated gatherings of the G7. In the period between two summits held in the UK – Birmingham in 1998 and Gleneagles in 2005 – the talk was of little else. There was public activism and it led to political action.
In part, that was because the big developed countries were enjoying a spell of low-inflationary growth and could look beyond their own problems to see a bigger picture. There was the occasional financial panic, but the G7 thought the problems of economic management had largely been solved and all that was needed was a bit of tinkering by technocratic central bankers.
Continue reading...Children’s commissioner for England condemns ‘scandal’ of family homelessness
Thousands of homeless children are growing up in cheaply converted shipping containers and cramped rooms in former office blocks, putting their health and wellbeing at serious risk, according to the children’s commissioner for England.
Anne Longfield said it was scandal that at least 210,000 young people in homeless families in England were put up by councils in temporary housing and bed and breakfasts or forced to “sofa surf” with friends, often for long periods.
Continue reading...Entrepreneurs are cooking up wholesome alternatives to sugary baby formulas in a country where only one baby in 10 gets the recommended nutrition
When her baby was six months old, Dr Hemapriya Natesan found herself appalled by the sugary commercial baby food available. With her mother, she began to make batches of mullaikatiya sathumaavu, a traditional porridge for weaning infants in Tamil Nadu, southern India.
It’s a painstaking 10-day process with more than 15 grains, lentils and nuts. Many of the ingredients are first sprouted, then sun-dried in the sweltering heat before being slow-roasted, ground and sieved.
Continue reading...Murdered children are no longer news. International media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, where child deaths reached an all-time high last year, is sporadic at best. In Yemen it is estimated that at least 85,000 under-fives have died of starvation since 2015, a figure that numbs the mind. In Syria, especially, it is hard to keep count because children are being killed almost every day – and who is really counting?
Harrowing images briefly capture public attention. One of the more recent showed five-year-old Riham struggling amid the rubble of her bombed home in Ariha, in Syria’s north-western Idlib province, to save her baby sister, Tuqa. Riham died later in hospital along with her mother and another sister. Thanks to her efforts, and White Helmet rescuers, Tuqa survived.
Continue reading...Carl Beech and the Metropolitan police’s investigation have done a great disservice to all victims of this terrible crime (Report, 27 July). There are many problems concerning the investigation of historical child sex abuse. The gathering of facts can be almost impossible as the passage of time may have erased any evidence, and what does survive needs properly resourced and trained officers to bring it to court. I wonder if the taboo and heinousness of this subject conspire to for ever hold it in an investigative system lacking in rigour, ingenuity and the will to make change.
I also see that Beech claimed criminal injury compensation to the tune of £22,000. How was this possible? There is something seriously wrong when conviction rates are this low and innocent people have their lives shattered. Is it not time we admitted that this crime needs specialist units who are well trained and resourced, so that when a child or adult makes the brave decision to report, they can be supported by a system they can trust, and see justice done.
Sara Newman
Groombridge, East Sussex
Emboldened by the body-positive movement and a sense of rage, a growing chorus is pushing back against a common custom
The media officer of one of the UK’s top medical schools doesn’t realise she hasn’t muted herself as she puts me on hold.
She sniggers with her colleague as she passes on my request – to speak to an expert on male circumcision – before informing me they don’t have one.
Continue reading...Eliminating hunger by 2030 is an immense challenge, say heads of UN agencies
More than 820 million people worldwide are still going hungry, according to a UN report that says reaching the target of zero hunger by 2030 is “an immense challenge”.
The number of people with not enough to eat has risen for the third year in a row as the population increases, after a decade when real progress was made. The underlying trend is stabilisation, when global agencies had hoped it would fall.
Continue reading...India and Bangladesh drive progress but UN study identifies vast inequalities between countries and among poor
The UN’s key global poverty index has identified that conditions for the world’s poorest 40% are improving more quickly than for those just above them.
The positive trend has been identified in the latest assessment of world poverty collected by the UN Development Programme, which quantifies relative impoverishment across the globe by multiple factors.
Continue reading...More than 4,000 sign petition to overturn decision, which aimed to appease neighbours
A national debate has been sparked in the Netherlands after a council ordered a primary school playground to be shut for being too noisy.
Questions have been raised in the Dutch parliament and a campaign has been launched to save the playground in the wake of the decision by Nijmegen council.
Continue reading...Aid worker Peter Dalglish, 62, sentenced for abusing two boys, aged 12 and 14
A former United Nations official has been jailed for sexually abusing children in Nepal after a trial that underscored the country’s growing appeal for foreign paedophiles.
Peter John Dalglish, 62, a high-profile humanitarian worker from Canada, was sentenced on Monday to two separate terms of nine years and seven years after being convicted last month.
Continue reading...Schoolchildren in Caldas take part in a voluntary project using a rubber doll with built-in software programmed to act like a newborn
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