The free primary education programme has received a boost from a United Nations agency. Unicef is to give $2.5 million for learning and teaching material for the lower classes in eight districts and in Nairobi. Some 450,000 pupils in Standards One to Three are expected to benefit from the grant.

Is social security, designed to provide protection against various contingencies, well suited to the elimination or redress of large-scale, endemic poverty? This article attempts to contribute to the debate surrounding social security systems in South Africa, as the basic income grant system is now considered not viable.

Thousands of children are being smuggled into Europe from war-ravaged Somalia every year, with Britain the most popular destination, according to a UN report. "Child smuggling from Somali territories is now so widespread that it has become a critical informal institution," the UN information agency report says.

Norway on Tuesday challenged the G-7 countries to follow its example and significantly increase their commitments to education initiatives in the developing world. Hilde Johnson, Norway's Minister for International Development, said this would be the only way of meeting the Dakar Declaration commitments, through which the international community undertook to ensure that no country that attempted to provide education for all its citizens would lack the resources to do so.