Social workers help children with HIV

Mai talks to social worker Trung at the residential centre
© UNICEF Viet Nam/2013/Truong Viet Hung

Thirteen-year-old Mai (not her real name) lives at a shelter for vulnerable children in An Giang, Viet Nam. She’s an orphaned girl living with HIV. After her parents died three years ago, she was looked after by her grandmother. They were very poor so instead of going to school, Mai worked in a rice shop. Her grandmother sold lottery tickets to make ends meet but she was 80 years old and in bad health. In the end, she was unable to look after Mai properly and contacted her local commune authority for help.

Children need clean water and sanitation

Globally, an estimated 2,000 children under the age of five die every day from diarrhoeal diseases and of these some 1,800 deaths are linked directly to poor water, sanitation and hygiene.

In East Asia and Pacific, the situation is still worrying. Across the East Asia and Pacific region, around 200 million people still don’t have access to improved water. As the world celebrates World Water Day on 22 March, UNICEF urges governments, civil society and ordinary citizens across the region to remember that behind the statistics are the faces of children.

Too little, too much, too dirty!

By Chander Badloe, UNICEF Regional WASH Advisor 


In Myanmar, a father digs out water to feed his son with a coconut shell cup
© UNICEF/MAMA2010-00009/Oo

Everyone can agree that water is crucial to human survival, but how much time to we spend thinking about it? So for World Water Day, everyone is being urged to take a few moments to think about one of the most precious natural resource we all use on a daily basis – water.

Dancing to end violence against women and girls

Women take part in the One Billion Rising flash mob in Bangkok
© UNICEF EAPRO/2013/Jessica Aumann

Jessica Aumann, Communications Officer for the UN Girls Education Initiative, attends a commemoration of International Women’s Day in Bangkok and dances in a flash mob as part of the One Billion Rising movement to end violence against women.

International Women's Day 2013

International Women's Day is celebrated on 8 March 2013. This year's theme is 'action to end violence against women'. UNICEF's gender specialist for East Asia and the Pacific, Chemba Raghavan, explains what this means for girls and women in the region.

Ending measles and rubella in Mongolia

March 2013: The Measles & Rubella Initiative, a global partnership to end these diseases, has helped reduce measles deaths by 71 per cent since 2001. An October 2012 immunization campaign against measles and rubella in Mongolia reached over 95 per cent of targeted children.

To view the full photo captions, expand the gallery and click 'show info' in the top right corner.

The long march: children go to school

Pan In (centre) at home with her mother and siblings
© UNICEF Cambodia/2013/Andy Brown

In Cambodia, ten-year-old Pan In is attending school for the first time this year, following a local school enrolment campaign. She wears a clean white-and-blue uniform. “I walk to school every day with my brother,” she says. “It’s a long way and we don’t always get there on time, but my teacher is nice and she doesn’t blame me. I like learning literacy but not maths. Between classes, I water the flowers in the school yard.”