Children in focus

The Universal Children’s Day is celebrated on the 20th of November every year. The idea is to promote the welfare of the world’s children. The date was chosen as it marks the day on which the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.
Both these declarations clearly define the rights of children, irrespective of their gender, country, socio-economic position or culture. These rights include, among many others, the right to proper food, clothing, shelter, education and upbringing.
Unfortunately, the reality is a stark contrast from all those conventions and declarations. Children all over the world are the victim of various issues. Children from South Asia are no different. Some of these issues include:

Malnutrition
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN estimates that the following countries have five million or more under-nourished people:
India
China
Bangladesh
Democratic Republic of Congo
Pakistan
As can be gauged from the above, four of the five top countries hail from the South Asian region, which says a lot about the kind of malnutrition that is generally prevalent. More statistics indicate that it is South Asia which has the greatest rate of child malnutrition. About 5.6 million children die every year in India alone; half of the children are underweight.

Child abuse
Constituting physical and emotional abuse, children from South Asia suffer from violence, child trafficking and discrimination.

Illiteracy and child labor
Many children do not have the luxury of acquiring formal education. They neither go to school nor are tutored privately. Others are forced to leave their education and prematurely join the workforce. The number of such children exceeds 150 million in Asia alone. Industries where they are forced to work include textiles, mining, leather, and toy-manufacturing. Most have to work in the farms and construction sites as well.

Child marriages
Marriage of a girl-child to an adult or the arranged marriage of two children comprises cultural practices of many countries all over the world. Interestingly, it is again South Asia which takes the cake in terms of figures, as it has the highest incidence of child marriages all over the world. Laws have been enacted in certain countries to curb this practice, however, it still continues unabated, especially in the rural areas.

Yes, the above does paint a very bleak picture. One might wonder, what really is the silver lining in all of this? The fact is that even though the situation is rather alarming, there are individuals and organizations, which have dedicated their life and work towards the welfare of children.

Organizations here in Pakistan include The Citizens Foundation and Society for the Promotion for Educational Welfare, which aim towards eliminating child illiteracy and providing formal education to the children. Similarly, many non-government bodies are working towards eradication of child abuse.

Internationally, particularly in the South Asian region, South Asian Initiative to End Violence Against Children is an inter-governmental body working for the alleviation of child abuse. With the head office based in Nepal, their vision is a region where “all children, girls and boys, throughout South Asia enjoy their right to an environment free from all forms of violence, abuse, exploitation, neglect and discrimination.” Their working groups deal with early marriage, corporal punishment, sexual abuse, trafficking and child labor.

Yes, one may argue that these are not enough organizations. Also, their work might not seem very significant. However, they are at least trying, and they must be commended for that. The situation does require urgent attention, and it is up to these philanthropic and conscious individuals and organizations to stand the test of time and come up with workable and practical solutions to deal with the issues that confront the children of this world today.

Now There Is Hope For Her

First, the bill defines harassment as: "any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favors or other verbal and written communication or physical conduct of a sexual nature or sexually demeaning attitudes, causing interference with the work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment, or the attempt to punish the complainant for refusal to comply to such a request or is made condition for employment."

If an individual's crime of harassment is proved, he can be handed a minor penalty or a major penalty, depending on the nature of the harassment. The bill mentioned a range of minor penalties, some of which include censure, withholding of increment/promotion. Some of the major penalties include demotion to a lower post, compulsory retirement, removal/dismissal from service and fine.

Who will award these penalties and how? If a complaint of harassment is made, the organization concerned will have to form an inquiry commission, which will hear the version of both the parties and submit their findings within 30 days. The committee will have to have three members, including a woman. The committee's recommendations will be submitted to the relevant authority, which will then hand the penalties.

How is the government planning to implement this bill? What concrete, practical measures have been put in place to ensure that punishments are indeed handed out to the perpetrators of harassment?

There are two major problems. The victims of harassment are almost always unwilling to come forward and report that they are being harassed. Reporting any crime means unwanted publicity and most of the people, especially working women, prefer to suffer in silence, rather than take on the "big wigs" of their organization.

The second problem is more sinister - quite often, the perpetrator does not see him/herself as someone who is doing anything wrong. This mindset dominating to an alarmingly high extent and there is very little one can do on an individual level to change that.

The law must clearly define the actions which constitute harassment, so as to ensure that the law is not abused, and the perpetrators realize that what they are doing is a crime, and they would have to be accountable for it. The law would also have to assure some sort of anonymity and protection for the woman who comes forward to report the crime.

Secondly, a mass awareness campaign is needed involving public service messages, advertisements, drama serials, etc. to ensure that the message goes across to all levels of the public. It is not enough to simply pass a bill and sit back.

Workplace harassment is definitely something that needs to be dealt with. The bill sounds like a venture in the right direction. One can definitely recommend the other South Asian nations to take a leaf out of our book and implement similar laws in their countries. While Pakistan is the first country which has taken specific steps to deal with workplace harassment and has declared it as a crime, more is needed to ensure that the bill is implemented in letter and spirit.

Welcome To Mountain Land

F and figures prove that tourism is one of the largest revenue-earning sectors in Nepal. And why not? Mount Everest is strategically placed here and the Himalayan Range offers a whole range of activities from hiking to trekking to rafting.

First and foremost is of course, trekking. The most popular trekking trails are the ones leading to the Mount Everest base camp and those around the Annapurna Mountains. Mountaineering on Mount Everest is for more serious climbers, since it is not only expensive, but also very dangerous for novices as the slopes are steep and covered in snow.

By far, the most popular activity is rafting, since there are many rivers in Nepal. To truly enjoy a rafting trip, one must go camping for a full day, as rafts go through both forests and canyons. Also, there are around eight national parks to visit, featuring different activities for the tourists.

The Ministry of Tourism in Nepal has listed some very interesting statistics related to tourism and tourists in 2008: Most tourists arrived in Nepal by air than land. Average length of stay was more for males than females. Most of the tourists were in the age group of 31 to 45 years. Most of the tourists belonged to Asia, closely followed by Western Europe. The top five countries from which the most tourists visited Nepal were: India, Sri Lanka, China, U.K. and U.S.A. Most of the tourists came for holidays, closely followed by those who came for mountaineering.

On another very interesting note, the Nepali government has declared 2011 to be "Nepal Tourism Year." An official website has been set up, detailing the various tourist points all over Nepal. According to this website, the Nepali government has set certain targets for itself. It is aiming to welcome one million international tourists. It is also set to disperse at least 40% of the international tourists into emerging and new tourist areas. It also hopes to attract investment on tourism infrastructures.

Some of the aims and objectives of this Year, as specified by the website, include: establishing Nepal as a choice of premier holiday destination with a definite brand image, improving and extending tourism-related infrastructures in existing and new tourism sites and promoting domestic tourism for sustainability of the industry.

The website - http://nepaltourismyear2011.com/ - also lists specific holiday destinations, festivals and special events, plus a travel guide for the benefit of the visitors.

All in all, one can definitely state that Nepal is one country, which has the potential to come to mind as a potential holiday spot. However, one can easily surmise that the government will have to invest in the construction of alternative tourist spots, if the image of Nepal as a destination for mountaineers and trekkers has to be diversified. The presence of Himalayas does contribute to this image, but it must be considered that not everyone is looking to go on expeditions, trek and climb mountains. Hopefully, the Tourism Year 2011 will help broaden the image of Nepal and at the same time, encourage investors to develop a more diversified tourist infrastructure.

Fact And Fiction

So what are the facts? And how do we get them straight? It is vitally important here to actually delve into the pictures painted by Afghan writers themselves, because only they can give a first-hand account of the reality.

Abdullah Qazi, who runs a popular Afghanistan-based information portal, Afghan Web, has given a rather bleak outlook. He says that repression of women is still quite prevalent in the rural areas of Afghanistan. "They (girls) are still forced into marriages and denied a basic education. Numerous schools for girls have been burnt down and little girls have even been poisoned to death for daring to go to school," he writes. He, however, says that urban Afghan women have an easier time as they get education and participate in public life.

The economic and political conditions are not very encouraging either. The Centre for Research on Globalization, a Canada-based research organization and media group, has challenged the claim that the Afghan government is working towards a pro-women agenda. In his article, John W. Warnock has pointed to legislation passed in early 2008. "...the new legislation limited guardianship of children to fathers and paternal grandfathers, that a wife could not leave her house without the permission of her husband, that women could only inherit moveable property, and that the wife is "bound to preen for her husband, as and when he desires." A wife is allowed to work outside the house "unless her work affects the interest of the family in a negative way," he writes. Warnock is adamant that life even for an urban Afghan woman is not easy.

A report by ‘Womankind Worldwide' (UK-based group) in February 2008 reinforced this. It basically stated that the legal system in Afghanistan does not practically support women. There are elaborate laws which favor women; however, such laws are hardly implemented, with the result that quite a lot of innocent Afghan women land in jail.

Other statistics by ‘Womankind Worldwide' are not very encouraging either - 60% of marriages are enforced upon women by their families while 87% of the women surveyed had undergone abuse on a physical and psychological level.

Reading "official" and "unofficial" versions of what is really happening in Afghanistan, one does get the impression that large scale information propaganda is going on. The highly positive stories and pictures of Afghan women, which sound too good to be true, are actually as fictitious as they can get. In-depth interviews with common Afghan women portray the real side of the picture - a picture not pretty at all. Afghan women are still the victims of a patriarchal mindset, and no law can ever change that. Is anyone willing to take the government to task and make things better? Or will everyone, international governments included, continue to feed us the false stories?

Playing around with HTML

In this day and age, there are quite a few people who have their own blogs, if not a personal website. While making a blog, the blog hosting service offers its own collection of templates, from which one can choose any style that seems suitable. These templates are quite diverse in terms of layout and colour scheme and take away the whole hassle of ‘designing’ from the blogger.

However, they sometimes do seem incomplete. A blogger or a website owner can always think of changing one colour, or one font type to suit him or herself. But without adequate knowledge of HTML, this task is not possible.However, there is one website which can make things easier for you, and that is ‘HTML Playground’ where any novice blogger can generate the required HTML code. This code can then be inserted into the blog to achieve the desired effect.

It works in a simple way. As soon as you enter the website, it gives you a short demo of how you need to use the tool. Once you hit close, you are ready to go.

First and foremost, you select the HTML tag — this basically means you choose whatever you want to alter, for instance, do you want to alter the heading on your website/blog or insert a table?

Once you select the tag, you choose its attributes — what font type and size do you want your heading to be; what colour should the heading be when someone places the mouse over it? You choose your own attributes for the tag, and the code generates itself in another box. All the while, there is a description box to help along the way. Once you get your code, you can simply insert it into your blog.

While this website is definitely very handy and very convenient, there are a few things which need to be looked into. Firstly, there is no way to bring back the demo window once you hit close. One idea can be to open this website itself in two different tabs or windows, and keep the demo window open at all times for reference. This way, even if you get stuck at some point, you can refer to the demo of this website. Having said that, the layout and colour scheme of this website is definitely very appealing and well-chosen. Those who wish to explore deeper can visit the blog and forums available here.

To tweak the HTML of any of your websites or blogs, use the handy tool available at http://htmlplayground.com/

Risks, risks everywhere!

Another year means yet another Earth Day. Like the previous years, this year’s Earth Day will also see more and more appeals by environmentalists to pay heed to the state of our planet. There will be yet another call to ‘go green’. More and more people will join the cause, albeit virtually, to do something about global warming at an individual level.

However, as proven by current scientific research, all that is being done to improve the state of the planet is clearly not enough. Every single slip has huge repercussions, whether those slips occur on an individual or on national level. The bigger culprits are, of course, the corporations to whom ‘going green’ also means a decline in profits.

So what does research say anyway? What is the current state of our environment? What is this planet going to be like for the generations to come? Following are some of alarming news stories, based on the latest scientific research, which have been collect from Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com)

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/in-paper-magazine/sci-tech-world/earth-matters-risks-risks-everywhere

Spell Well

It goes without saying that the ability to spell words correctly is definitely as much of a skill, as are reading and writing. At first glance, it does seem as if learning to spell and becoming a wiz at spelling is a piece of cake, at least when compared to writing. However, in this day and age, spelling is an art in itself.

This is mainly because of two reasons — firstly, more and more young people are exposed to both British and American spellings, and it has become ever more important to learn to distinguish between the two. And, secondly, the age of the internet and cell phones means that the correct spelling of words is one of the major casualties, as young people resort to shorthand as much in their SMSs as in their examination paper.

And yet, it is the internet which comes to the rescue when it comes to improving one’s spelling skills. There are a myriad of websites out there that can do wonders for you. Whether you are a beginner, looking to start improving your spellings, or an expert, who just wants to revise, there is something for you in the form of a whole collection of websites out there and they can easily be categorised under the following sections.

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/in-paper-magazine/young-world/spell-well-become-a-spelling-wiz