At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, participants promised to advance the rights of women and girls everywhere. Part of that promise, set out in the historic Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, was to ensure education for all girls.
Every year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18. That is 23 girls every minute. In some Southeast Asia countries, child marriages and teenage pregnancies continue to rise. ASEAN member states Indonesia, Lao PDR and Vietnam, among others have long practiced early unions.
The world has been battling the coronavirus pandemic for more than 10 months now. People are slowly adapting to a new normal amid the crisis, such as physical distancing and mask wearing. However, they are still getting infected every day, with more than 50 million COVID-19 cases reported worldwide.
Following years of pressure from advocacy groups, Indonesia's Parliament revised its national laws last year to increase the legal age a girl can marry. The amendment to the Marriage Act raised the age of marriage for girls to 19 years old which is in line with the legal age for boys, with parental permission, while the legal age for men and women to marry without parental consent is 21.
Some 45 million people around the world have been infected with the COVID-19 virus, with over one million fatalities reported to date.
Ministries and child protection non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Cambodia have established a joint-committee for the implementation of the Action Plan to Prevent and Respond to Violence Against Children 2017-2021.The Action Plan highlights an array of situations of violence against children in the kingdom including physical and sexual violence, child neglect, child marriage, trafficking and labour, and online child sexual exploitation, among others.While Cambodia has certainly been im
A recent poll found that one in three Americans would not be willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, while anti-vaxxers have reportedly gained at least 7.8 million new social media followers since 2019. Like the pandemic itself, anti-vax misinformation and rumours know no borders.
On Monday, 5 October, 2020, the Indonesian government ratified the Omnibus Law on Job Creation. During the drafting process of the ratification of the law, various groups had heatedly rejected it.
For the past three months, Melbourne, the metropolitan area of nearly five million people, and capital of the Australian state of Victoria, has been under one of the world’s tightest lockdowns.
There is a growing consensus that one or more COVID-19 vaccines will become available at some point in early 2021. Within a year, many people in the United States (US), and some other countries, will be vaccinated. For some childhood diseases, the development of a vaccine was by itself decisive.
As lockdowns ease in countries across Asia and the Pacific in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing is clear – a return to business as usual is unimaginable in a region that was already off track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The COVID-19 pandemic has to a considerable degree exposed the Philippines to several vulnerabilities, which include the knock-on effect of the pandemic on the country’s economy, weakness of the country’s existing health care system and infrastructures, and threats to food security because of the fragile agriculture and food systems of the country.
