DAMASCUS/AMMAN/GENEVA, 17 May 2013 – Despite heavy fighting, UNICEF and partners have provided life-saving supplies over the last week to some of the hardest to reach areas in Syria, including Aleppo and Al Houla, as well as children and women who fled recent violence in Al Bayda and Baniyas.

UNICEF and partners reached Zamarin and surrounding areas, on the outskirts of Tartous, which is hosting some 6,000 women and children who fled the nearby villages of Al Bayda and Baniyas, where mass killings have reportedly taken place this month.

PARIS, 15 May 2013 – An international conference to fight child malnutrition called by UNICEF ended today in Paris with a call to hasten world progress on child nutrition and the funding for it.

“The Paris conference produced a very strong consensus on responses to be made. It also marked an important step in expressing the political will to attack this scourge by governments, both in the South and the North,” said Michèle Barzach, the President of UNICEF France.

UNICEF correspondent Chris Niles reports on efforts to get children back to school in the Philippines following Typhoon Bopha.

By Meena Bhandari

Six months after Typhoon Bopha took more than 1,000 lives and displaced more than a million people, teaching and learning are starting up again in elementary schools across affected parts of the Philippines.

The PCV immunization programme is expected to reach as many as 1.4 million children and save thousands of lives.

By Proscovia Nakibuuka Mbonye

A new immunization programme against pneumonia is expected to reach as many as 1.4 million children and save thousands of lives.

SITTWE, Myanmar, 15 May 2013 – As Cyclone Mahasen threatens to hit the communities in Rakhine State, where thousands of people are displaced by conflict, UNICEF is ready to support the government of Myanmar to respond to humanitarian needs.

The living conditions of the people in Rakhine are already precarious as a result of inter-communal conflict and displacement. Should the storm make heavy landfall, their situation will become very fragile.

Mutarara, MOZAMBIQUE - In districts across Mozambique, UNICEF partners with the Ministry of Justice in establishing the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) system, a crucial element of a country’s good governance and respect for civil and human rights. A key component of the CRVS system is the national Birth Registration programme. The programme’s aim is to recognise the fundamental rights of every child to establish identity, citizenship and family ties.

2.4 billion people will lack improved sanitation in 2015 - World will miss MDG target

GENEVA/NEW YORK, 13 May 2013 – Some 2.4 billion people – one-third of the world’s population – will remain without access to improved sanitation in 2015, according to a joint WHO/UNICEF report issued today.

YAOUNDE/BANGUI/GENEVA, 10 May 2013 – UNICEF condemns in the strongest possible terms the re-recruitment and the killing of a 17-year-old boy.*

On 24 April, the 17-year-old and a 19-year-old* were ordered by a Seleka officer known as the Colonel to steal a vehicle in a Bangui neighborhood. A crowd gathered at the scene and they were stoned to death by a mob while the Colonel leading the attempt theft fled the scene.

Memories of the past and fears of the future

By Patrick Wells BAB AL SALAMA, Syrian Arab Republic, 23 April 2013 – Last November, Bassam Guan, a 35-yearold father of four, left for work at a freezer plant in his hometown of Marea in the northern part of Syria. His family never saw him again. That afternoon, the plant was bombed. Mr. Guan and nine of his colleagues died in the explosion.