"About once a month, dozens -- and sometimes hundreds -- of students spill out of this school in the Indonesian capital wielding chains, belts, bamboo sticks and stones. Glass bottles smash and ricochet off the school's high metal gates as students clash with their rivals from nearby campuses in the brown haze of traffic pollution. Such fights are not confined to this mega city of at least 11 million. Large scale violence between students forms a backdrop to unrestrained urban growth in many of Asia's burgeoning metropolises.

In China, the latest official figures reported by the Xinhua news agency show 23 students were killed in fights between January 2005 to June 2006. School violence is a consequence of the process of urbanization. Some students that come from the countryside are suceptible to psychological problems when they start to study in urban schools. The family background is also an important factor. The parents divorce, or they are busy doing business, and they don't have time to take care of their children. An estimates 1 billion more people will move into Asia's urban areas over the next quarter of a century, and school fights are already an entrenched phenomenon."

"As China prepares for the 2008 Olympics, we hear a lot about the economic boom which has transformed the big cities. But for villagers, life has not changed that much. In the hills of Ningxia, Ma Yu Bao and his wife do not know what to do. Two of his grown sons are sick, and even obtaining the basic necessities of life causes problems. In these dry hills Mr Ma has a daily trek to fetch the household water in a sort of improvised rubber tub strapped to the back of his mule. The journey -- some 5km there and back -- takes him four hours. He says he would like to abandon the village, as so many others do.

Experts say large-scale official resettlement to irrigated farmland hundreds of miles away is the only solution, rather than trying to improve life in the mountains. Of the 1,800 inhabitants of the neighboring settlement, some 500 men migrate to the towns to supplement their farm incomes for at least part of the year. It estimated that the number of people living below the poverty line in China is three times previous estimates: 300 million people living on $1 a day or less."

"Every morning, hundreds of children enter coal mines around Kok Jangak in the Kyrgyz Rep. Following the fall of the Soviet-era, Kyrgyz's once-buoyant mining industry collapsed. State-run mines were closed in 1998, and since then some private companies have moved in to take them over. Apart from the private firms, there are thought to be dozens of unofficial companies operating.

In many households in Kok Jangak, fathers have gone to work abroad in Russia or Kazakhstan, and children often have to become breadwinners. They are hired for mining because their slight frames are suited to crawling through the cramped shafts. Crawling through a coal mine with a 30-kilogram sack is not an easy job, and the children often slip down into holes in the corridor. Although their earnings, about $5 a day, are considered relatively high, the money is still barely enough to make ends meet and is certainly not worth the dangers."

"There are an estimated three million mines implanted in Cambodia and most are still there, although the number of new victims has generally decreased. To de-mine all of them, you would probably take another 40 years or so. Amputees in Cambodia who have to depend on prostheses continue to live as they did before their accidents, with many working as farmers.

About 40% of patients at Kampung Speu rehabilitation center are amputees, 90% of whom have limbs that were shattered by mines. The remaining 60% of patients there suffer other disabilities, like polio. At the center, patients are offered help to fit custom-made prostheses and adjust them accordingly as they practice walking with comfort. New fittings are also made for those who need them."

"Due to climate change, a population explosion and major urbanization, the old method of removing human waste is no longer sustainable. Although water is life, it is also a killer if it contaminates. In developing regions, effluents get dumped into water courses untreated due to the phenomenal costs of sewer collection systems and high rate of wastewater treatment technology.

Experts have called for major sanitation reforms, along the concept of ecological sanitation, that would contribute toward water conservation and mitigating surface and ground water pollution, thereby reducing the risk of water-borne diseases. This rethinking would not require an abandonment of conventional water management while developing strategies that are effective, low-tech and low-cost."

"In Colombo, 51 percent of the residential population lives in under-served settlements which in the traditional terminology are known as slums and shanties. Urban poor, a typical product of wrong economic development processes, live in extreme housing conditions with insufficient basic amenities and mostly with no home ownership. They have been marginalized from the mainstream of the society. In addition to the burden of unemployment, they are exposed to hazardous environmental and health related conditions. Most of them live their whole life in jam-packed, ill-ventilated and ill-equipped spaces.

Most children in these under-served settlements do not have access to basic education; many do not have a childhood and are vulnerable to urban crimes. Even children who have some opportunity to go to school are socially depressed due to prevailing social and environmental conditions of their neighborhoods. Providing better housing with essential basic amenities to change the living environment of under-served settlements should be the gateway toward making Colombo, a safer, healthy and sustainable city."

"By the side of a busy road in Shanghai's financial district, Zhao Ping Hua is mixing cement. He is a laborer on the city's new metro system, and one of the millions of farmers who leave the countryside every year for the riches of the city. The wages are good here, as much as $250 a month, with overtime. But for him it means sacrifice, living away from his family, and he misses his children.

But he says has no choice. In Shanghai's building boom, he can earn four times as much as he would back in the countryside. His is a journey that tens of millions of workers make every year, leaving their villages and their families behind. China says there are as many as 20 million migrant workers, but unofficial estimates put the figure far higher."

"Ho Chi Minh City has nearly 1.5 million unskilled laborers working in various business sectors. About 70 percent come from provinces in the Mekong Delta and the rest mostly from the north and central regions. The average monthly income of a worker including basic wage, extra-shift pay and other allowances is less than $80, while monthly expenses for essentials reach $62 for rent, food, and necessities. Only a small percentage of the laborers live in dormitories built by their companies or the industrial parks where they work. The majority of employees rent cramped rooms from local residents.

In general, families of workers, who have neither reserves nor bright futures, share the fear that a period of unemployment means starvation. After a period of time struggling to maintain the family, most couples have to give way and send their children back to their hometown to live with their grandparents. Poor conditions have caused many laborers to return home. But once there they are paid even lower wages in their hometown's industrial parks."

"Soaring oil prices are threatening the prospects of millions of poor people across the Asia Pacific. In a report on 'Overcoming Vulnerability to Rising Oil Prices: Options for Asia and the Pacific', the UNDP said rising oil prices were starting to put a brake on human development and in some cases, shifting it into reverse. Millions of poor people are being forced to climb down the energy ladder, reverting to traditional fuels that are unhealthy and inefficient.

The poor are cutting back even on bare essentials of travel and services which are increasingly beyond their reach. Between 2002 and 2005, households have suffered dramatic oil-price increases -- paying on average 74 percent more for their energy needs. While a nation's economy has the ability to endure such price fluctuations, the same is not true for the region's poor trying to cope with the impact of high prices and inflation."

"The accelerating economic decline in Uzbekistan has led many laborers to migrate to neighboring Kazakhstan or Russia looking for work. Poverty is the main reason many Uzbeks end up working as modern-day slaves in nearby countries. Uzbek labor migrants, mostly illegal, flock to Russia and Kazakhstan to work in construction, agriculture, textiles processing, and other service sectors.

Large numbers of Uzbeks try to cross the border to Kazakhstan every day. But once they get over the border, many Uzbeks find themselves the property of Kazakh and Russian businesspeople, subject to abuse, neglect, and long hours of work. There were 102,658 officially registered labor migrants and about 1.5 million illegal immigrants from Uzbekistan in Russia in 2006. The lack of legal registration facilitates conditions that support low wages, weak social support, and bad treatment of employees."

"In recent years, the flow of people out of Myanmar has become one of South East Asia's largest migration movements. Some of these are refugees, others are economic migrants driven by the desire to escape grinding poverty and hardship. Workers from Myanmar have been filling unpopular, low-paid jobs. Many end up working in mining, construction and road building, as well as on factory production lines and in the textile industry.

The Thai government offers one-year migrant worker permits -- albeit with restrictions and conditions -- to those that can afford them. Many people, however, choose to take their chances and work illegally, leaving them vulnerable to unscrupulous employers."

"Hardest hit in Myanmar are the young. Less than 50 percent of children will complete five years of education. They also suffer from a range of diseases including Aids and tuberculosis. The malnourished are not only in remote rural areas but also in larger cities like Yangon. In the slums of the former capital the smiles of the children playing in the dirt belie the hardships and daily battle for survival which goes on throughout the entire country. At least a third of all children are malnourished and 132,000 children under five die every year because of avoidable diseases.

Myanmar spends less than $3 per person per year on health and education -- well below the World Health Organization recommended level of $40 per person. There are no figures for the number of unemployed but many people exist on a wage of around $1 a day. The World Food Program is feeding nearly half a million people this year but say they could easily double their budget and still not feed everyone in need."

"As flood waters continue to recede throughout much of Bangladesh after this year's above average monsoon rains, health experts have expressed concern over child malnutrition in the country. Children suffer from diarrhea, respiratory tract infection, pneumonia, conjunctivitis and viral fever. Iodine, iron and vitamin-A deficiencies are endemic in some hard-to-reach pockets. Deficiency of these micronutrients causes severe malnutrition that makes children susceptible to impaired intellect, night blindness and host of other health disorders.

The extensive damage caused to this year's crops and vegetable fields by floods in late August and early September have pushed the price of food and other essentials well above the buying power of many people. Vegetable prices in August went up by 21 percent compared to July, while the price of rice and eggs also increased by 6.62 and 7.40 percent respectively over the same period."

"Can you imagine surviving on just Rs 20 (50 US cents) per day? Yet, 836 million people in India live on this paltry amount. If it costs more than Rs 20, 77 percent of the population cannot afford it. This is the unfortunate reality of the resurgent India. Lost in the glory that India has joined the ranks of the world's economic powers, are India's real people, to whom the shining malls and the fancy real estate prices make no difference whatsoever.

Three hours from the gleaming malls and throbbing infrastructure of Gurgaon, Javeda's family lives in absolute poverty. It is one in the afternoon and she hasn't eaten. Her first meal of the day will be two rotis for lunch, the tea before sunset will be her dinner."

"His skin is caked in toxic black soot, his lungs poisoned -- and, at the end of the day, he'll wash in one of the world's most polluted rivers. Biplob is five years old. Others working alongside him in a bamboo and corrugated iron shack are a little older. Mugba is seven, Dania 10. This is the Black Hole in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka -- a huddle of riverside factories where children work taking apart old batteries for recycling. They don't go to school. Instead, for 50 hours a week and a wage of $2, they bash away at the batteries with metal mallets.

The Black Hole is one of a dwindling number of battery factories in Bangladesh. After the batteries are taken apart, the insides are heated in furnaces to separate the lead, mercury, zinc and cadmium. But the children have no face masks -- meaning the toxic fumes quickly fill their lungs. Life expectancy in Bangladesh is 50. But these kids will be lucky to see 30. Exposure to mercury and lead causes nausea, chest pains and, in extreme cases, seizure and coma. And there's another danger -- the Buriganga river yards from the factory. It's full of waste and sewage and its waters give you diarrhea, hepatitis and typhoid."

"The universal problem of habitual, corrosive under-nutrition -- which annually kills more people than any headline-grabbing crisis -- seems as insoluble as ever. Take Cambodia, now a relatively stable country. It has swallowed billions in aid since the end of its wars 10 years ago, and successfully restarted its economy. Yet 46 percent of its under-fives are malnourished and stunted. Fewer children die there in infancy now, but the brains and bodies of nearly half its children will not develop properly and they will be prey to recurring illness for their shortened lives.

Lack of iodine, which causes mental retardation in children, is a common Cambodian problem. If children's protein intake was doubled in Cambodia, 20,000 lives would be saved each year. Rice crops from small paddy fields might, in the past, have provided enough extra cash to help poor families through the dry season. However, liberalized trade has meant opening its borders to rice imports. These have poured in from Vietnam, where cooperative farming produces much cheaper rice. The price of rice in Cambodia collapsed."

"Like many of its neighbors, Kyrgyzstan never recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union, which destroyed, among other things, the country's once-thriving mining industry. The coal mines were abandoned, and the infrastructure left lying in ruins. After years of watching the government fail to revive the economy, people turned to excavating coal themselves. But the mines they dug out were often too narrow for adults, and so fathers began bringing in their sons.

The children work all year round, under the blistering heat of the summer and in the freezing temperatures of the harsh mountain winter. People take their children out of schools and send them to work at mines, there is simply no other way to make money. Accidents and deaths are common and people are desperate for government help, but they are also reluctant to ask for it."

"There are only 36 public toilets in Kabul, which has a population of over four million. Many resort to defecating and urinating in public places, including the River Kabul in the heart of the city, now dry due to a prolonged drought. Some blame dry toilets for foul smells in Kabul's dusty streets and for contributing to the spread of disease. When Kabul was a small town, it was feasible and safe for donkey carts to carry excrement out of town for use as fertilizer. However, rapid urbanization is putting this traditional practice into question.

Traditional dry vault toilet systems have been around for centuries in Central Asia and parts of China where nutrients for agriculture are scarce. Most urban households in Afghanistan use specially-shaped dry vault toilets which collect solid and liquid waste separately. But alternatives, such as pit or soakaway latrines have their own problems. Given the widespread use of underground water for all purposes in Kabul -- where only a small fraction of houses have tap water -- the municipality has warned that if all houses used septic and/or absorbing latrines, water sources would become contaminated."

"At the Ca Mau floating market, an on-river trader was determined to send his children to school to change their lives. However, the girl could only study to the third grade and returned to her boat-house to do housework and sell small things with her mother. Her elder brother named Tien tried to study four more years but finally, he returned to his boat-house after finishing seventh grade.

Day bay day, these children only work, sleep, work and sleep, without newspapers, books or television or any tool of entertainment. There are many cases of illiteracy not because of difficult circumstances but because children and their parents accept it."

"There are an estimated 50,000 trafficked brides in Haryana, India. It is normal to find men aged over 35 having 13-year-old brides in the Mewat region. In a state which is notorious for a low female to male ratio (861 girls to 1000 boys), the shortage of girls of marriageable age is beginning to be felt in many villages and townships. Coupled with this disturbing trend is the fact of increasing unemployment, drug addiction and delinquency among the youth.

The girls from poor states are available to be trafficked for anything between $98 to $740 depending upon factors like their looks, age, virginity and in some cases the number of times the prospective bride has changed hands. There is a network of agents operating in virtually every township of Haryana who facilitate such marriages with their linkages to similar agents operation in Delhi and in source states."

"Raising the legal age of marriage is among the more important actions that countries can take to bring their populations into balance with resources and the environment. Early marriage almost inevitably leads to high fertility, which, in turn, translates into poverty, malnourishment, disease, maternal mortality and morbidity and illiteracy. The practice is widespread in South Asia. In a number of countries, parents routinely encourage the marriage of very young daughters both to ensure that they will be cared for and because many traditional cultures insist that brides be virgins.

Half of Indian girls are married before age 18 despite a national prohibition against the practice. The Indian government imposes jail terms and fines, even for those attending weddings of underage brides. Making educational attainable for girls and ensuring that they are able to remain in school would be a substantial stride towards reducing this practice, which prompts early pregnancy. An all-too-frequent outcome of pregnancy among very young girls is obstetric fistula, which occurs when the birth canal is insufficiently developed to support a fetus. The condition is virtually unknown in more affluent countries but it has ruined the lives of thousands of girls, who are closer to being children than women -- girls who should be in classrooms, not in marriages."

"Waterborne diseases are the leading cause of death for young children in Pakistan, with an estimated 250,000 dying every year. If the country's population, or at least the bulk of it, had access to clean drinking water, the majority of these deaths could be prevented. Water contamination has also assumed dangerous proportions in recent years with unchecked pollution being diverted directly into sources of drinking water.

Government data reveals that 99 percent of industrial effluent and 92 per cent of urban wastewater is discharged untreated into rivers and the sea. Drinking water in most urban cities has been found to be laced with biological and chemical pollutants. Equally alarmingly, 36 percent of the population of Sindh and Punjab is exposed to arsenic levels in water that are five times more than the safe limits as prescribed by the World Health Organization."

"East Timor's farmers depend on traditional agriculture for their food, mainly rice and corn. But poor weather and a recent plague of locusts have caused a 30 percent decline in crop production in the last year. This leaves one fifth of the population, or more than 200,000 people, vulnerable to food shortages during the coming lean season, which runs from around November to around February.

The food shortages touch all ages, leaving many people malnourished from a poor diet of just rice. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization and WFP estimate that the cereal deficit for East Timor this year and next will reach 86,364 tons. With commercial imports anticipated at 71,000 tons, the shortfall needs to be filled through food assistance."

"Farmers in Azerbaijan risk being shot at and blown up by mines as they try to tend to their flocks and fields. Although a ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan was declared on May 12, 1994, people have continued to die in both villages from random shooting. On top of all this, the villages lack irrigation water.

The Armenians blocked the channel that used to run into the Davdagh artificial lake, which is now filled only when snow melts in the mountains and that only lasts for a month. 'If we did not breed cattle and sow potatoes and onions, we would die of hunger. It is better to die of a bullet than to starve to death,' said Firudin Mustafayev, a 65-year-old resident."

"Almost 80 percent of Indonesians use water sources that are likely to be contaminated with bacteria. Due to bad sanitation, some 100,000 toddlers in Indonesia die of diarrhea every year. People living in slum areas are the most prone to the disease as they have no connection to tap water services and have little money to spend on clean bottled water. In Jakarta's Teluk Gong, families under a highway flyover live in an environment that makes a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, but the risk has been minimized since they came upon a simple method to treat water.

Using their usual source of water from the local public tap plus a few drops of liquid sodium hypochlorite, the residents no longer have to spend money on buying kerosene to boil drinking water. The chemical costs them around 50 cents and frees their children from diarrhea. The use of liquid sodium hypochlorite is only one among many implemented in different settlement areas. Living in a city that sees slum dwellers as an eyesore, residents of areas like Teluk Gong are faced with the constant threat of eviction. Under such conditions, drops of sodium hypochlorite, plastic bottles and sun rays and ceramic filters made available at affordable price work better than empty promises of clean water from the authorities."

"Hidden behind the high-rise office blocks and glitzy shopping malls of Hong Kong, PRC, a huge number of ordinary people have been left behind by the economic boom since the city returned to Chinese rule a decade ago. Out of its seven million residents, an estimated 1.25 million live below the poverty line. Many share a room with nine other men in one of Hong Kong's notorious 'cage dwellings' -- small, dingy flats that have been further subdivided into cages where there is no room for anything other than a bed.

For these men, home is four walls of rusty steel wire mesh with a sliding door at one end that allows them to slide in and out. Official figures show a growing chasm between the rich and poor: one in 15 households in 2006 had a monthly total income of US$770 or less, four percent more than a decade ago."

"People in China are growing increasingly concerned about 'the second-generation poor' -- the adult sons and daughters of the poor who missed the golden opportunity to get rich, owing to a host of factors. Millions of children of the poor, who failed to share in the benefits brought by reform and lack social security guarantees, remain at the bottom rung of the social ladder. Young farmers-turned-urban-workers make up the bulk of the second-generation poor.

Disparities caused by education factors have become increasingly obvious in recent years. As educational costs keep rising, education is increasingly out of reach of the disadvantaged as a means to help them out of their wretched conditions. Surveys show that the employment of the urban poor is four percentage points lower than the average. In turn, low employment makes the poor poorer. Mechanisms guaranteeing the disadvantaged groups opportunities to raise their social status constitute a vitally important component in optimizing the social structure."

"At least 700 tea workers in India have died from diseases linked with malnutrition over the past year after the closure of tea estates left them with no income, and hundreds more are still starving. Two years ago, poor production and low yields led to the closure of 16 tea estates in Jalpaiguri, a remote part of West Bengal bordering the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, leaving plantation workers with no means of income. Investigations by the Supreme Court and tea workers' associations found that this had directly led to the deaths, leaving hundreds more unable to feed themselves.

As a result of the deteriorating situation, hundreds of former tea workers are being forced to travel across the border to Bhutan every day to work in the tiny nation's growing stone crushing and mineral factories. Most earn less than $2 a day in the factories which they say is simply not enough to sustain a livelihood. Those who stayed back -- starving and weak with no money for the last two years -- are being forced to forage for food in nearby forests to keep themselves and their children alive."

"As Central Asians attempt to escape the poverty of their countries, many are going to work in comparatively prosperous Russia. As labor migrants are by definition of working age, there is a higher than usual proportion of work-related fatalities compared with death from old age. Returning a body from Russia is awkward, complicated and expensive. Some bodies of migrant workers are flown home in the cargo holds of passenger planes, while others go via bus or train.

But before the journey can even begin, there are many preparations to be made, and forms to be obtained -- including death, sanitary and epidemiological certificates, as well as spapers to identify the body. There are seemingly endless expenses, from the cost of the morgue to undertakers' services. There are also transport costs, not just for the body, but also for those accompanying the remains."

"As Central Asians attempt to escape the poverty of their countries, many are going to work in comparatively prosperous Russia. As labor migrants are by definition of working age, there is a higher than usual proportion of work-related fatalities compared with death from old age. Returning a body from Russia is awkward, complicated and expensive. Some bodies of migrant workers are flown home in the cargo holds of passenger planes, while others go via bus or train.

But before the journey can even begin, there are many preparations to be made, and forms to be obtained -- including death, sanitary and epidemiological certificates, as well as spapers to identify the body. There are seemingly endless expenses, from the cost of the morgue to undertakers' services. There are also transport costs, not just for the body, but also for those accompanying the remains."

"Since Myanmar's capital was moved to Naypyidaw, conditions in Yangon's desperately poor townships have grown even worse. Filth, disease and malnutrition are rampant. Public-health experts say infectious diseases run rife in these areas, including high rates of tuberculosis, malaria and chronic diarrhea. Recent independent assessments indicate that malnourishment among children over the age of one runs as high as 35 percent.

There is a sense that the old capital is teetering on the brink of social collapse. In 2005, Myanmar ranked among the bottom 10 countries for health spending, earmarking less than 0.5% of gross domestic product. Now, observers say that the sanitation situation in the townships has deteriorated markedly. Outlying townships are a vast landscape of clapboard shanties situated in and around trash-strewn pools of untreated black sewage."

"According to aid workers in Nepal, neglect of rural communities is rising. Basanti Sunar and her family have spent most of their lives migrating to work in India as laborers. Recently, however, they decided to stay in their remote Accham village, hoping that the end of the decade-long conflict would bring development. But they have become more impoverished. The 25-year old mother now works at a stone quarry for a daily wage of $1. Everyday she grinds stones while breastfeeding her 18-month old son and carrying her two-year old daughter on her back.

In Accham's remote villages, peace has made no difference to poor villagers who continue to suffer extreme poverty with no regular source of income, unemployment, low food production and, above all, lack of support from the government. Aid agencies are concerned that development is still not getting adequate attention from politicians. Nepal is one of the least developed countries with a per capita GDP of $311. Thirty-one percent of the country's population live below the national poverty line."

"Indigenous and tribal peoples number only around 1 percent of the total population in Bangladesh. In a country already hard hit by poverty, Bangladesh's indigenous peoples often find themselves among the poorest of the poor. They face discrimination in education, employment and civil rights. Indigenous women often have little financial security; they are dependent on male family members. But what happens when that safety net vanishes?

Even in those indigenous societies where women were historically empowered, drastic changes in economic and political structures in recent decades have eroded women's traditional opportunities for financial independence. The hardship caused by the destruction of traditional industries has often fallen unduly on women, robbing them of social safety nets and opportunities for employment. Indigenous women often face disproportionately high mortality rates, low literacy rates and high levels of poverty."

"The fate of Nachna residents in southeast India has remained unaltered even after the government's initiative to improve their conditions. Malnutrition, recurring diseases and depression remain an inevitable part of the life of Nachna residents. This borderline hamlet in Bankura made headlines after consecutive starvation deaths in 2005. A survey has revealed that families are still suffering from hunger.

The residents deal in crafts to earn a living. The women collect leaves and bamboo shoots from the jungles and prepare baskets and plates. The men try to sell these at the local markets, but they do not fetch good prices. Residents are compelled to migrate to other districts during the cultivation season to work as agricultural laborers. The survey also revealed that Nachna residents have not been provided with Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards, or even if few of the families have been given the cards, a local ration dealer had kept those in his custody unlawfully."

"Some officials in China's Gansu Province have cleaned up their cities and villages in an innovative way. In Yongjing County, more than two kilometers of walls have been built flanking one side of a major road. Behind the two-meter-tall wall, is a sprawl of villagers' houses and yards, which are roughly built with mud. In some areas of this impoverished county, 70 percent of residents or more are living under the national poverty line.

From early 2006, the central government urged local officials to build a new countryside and to improve farmers' living conditions. However, some local governments prefer easy and instant ways to make the region look developed. The wall, dubbed an 'official loincloth' by villagers, has made their lives more inconvenient. One villager had to close his roadside shop after the wall was finished, and he even had trouble entering his own home."

"Despite urgent appeals by aid agencies, over 200,000 Tamil people who fled their homes last month continue to languish in squalid refugee camps. A lack of facilities in the makeshift shelters, a growing shortage of food, torrential rain and over-crowding are making living conditions unbearable and has turned the refugee camps into breeding ground for disease. Human feces, garbage and over crowding are creating serious health hazards in the camps.

Relief agencies say their operations in the war-torn eastern district lacks tents, medicine, baby food and clothes for the IDPs (Internally Displaced People). According to the UN's World Food Program, it can only look after the food needs of 100,000 IDPs through April and there are an estimated 240,000 IDPs in the district. The recent torrential rain has worsened the situation with several temporary shelters in Mankadu, Erivil, Kaluvanchikudy, Thethathivu and Vedar Kudiruppu collapsing."

"It is cheaper to buy a child than a buffalo in India, according to activists who marched on a summit of South Asian nations in Delhi to protest against human trafficking. Most end up in bonded labor or working as prostitutes. They claim that more than 50,000 Nepalese children and 40,000 Bangladeshi children are bought and sold across the border every year by scouts rounding up workers for farms, carpet factories, quarries and brothels.

Desperately poor parents frequently exchange their children for money, often as little as $5. Some falsely believe that their children are being taken to work as domestic servants and will send money home. Few ever return. Others trade their sons and daughters to pay money lenders. Up to 15 million children in India, most of them from low-caste families, could be enslaved to work off someone else's debt."

"In a world of displaced people struggling for survival, the plight of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, is little known. The Rohingyas live in atrocious conditions in a remote border region near Myanmar. They have been given little support by successive Bangladeshi governments, who've classified them as illegal immigrants. While food and housing are in short supply in the official refugee camps, largely funded by the United Nations, conditions are even worse in squatter camps on the Naf River.

There people are subsisting on a diet of weeds and yams from the forest. Doctors Without Borders set up an emergency feeding center to tackle malnutrition. One doctor says that the child death toll has been cut dramatically. Whereas the death toll was thirty a month or more now fewer than seven children die per month."

"Dehydration and poor sanitation throughout the Asia Pacific region is killing a child every seven minutes according to a new report released by World Vision Australia. Dirty water and poor hygiene are silent killers that each year account for the deaths of 80,000 children under five in the South East Asia and Pacific region alone.

In many cases the problem is not a lack of water but sanitation. Worldwide 1.8 million die from diarrhea every year. More sustainable community-led solutions not only save lives, but allow women who generally are responsible for collecting and using water to be more involved in decision-making and sanitation and young girls can attend school instead of spending hours everyday fetching water."

Full report:

"Although many people in PRC are benefiting from the booming economy, millions in the northeast are languishing in poverty-plagued shantytowns. The government is embarking on massive relocation projects to evict the poor from crumbling shacks and relocate them into new apartments. Some 4 million shanty dwellers are being targeted for eviction and relocation in the northeast provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang.

By demolishing the shanties, the government also aims to clear the way to boost development in the region. Poverty plagues the northeast, which is home to numerous coal mines and state-run companies. People are losing their livelihood as the state-planned economy gives way to one governed by a free market. But despite the promise of a better life, some residents are resisting the relocation as they fear they will be fleeced out of their property."

"The legions of Mumbai's poor are growing by the day, as thousands of people migrate from rural areas to the big city, sleeping on its sidewalks and hoping for a better life. According to government statistics, 60 percent of all city residents live in slums. Poor parents send out their starving children to beg at strategic locations assigned to them by the Beggars' Club, an organization devoted to the needs of beggars.

In 2003 there were 17 public toilets for every million people, and to this day at least one third of the city's residents have no access to clean drinking water. The railroad is the city's pulse. Six million people crowd into the system's groaning outdated trains every day. Passengers often have little standing room and no space for their belongings. The plastic tarps that serve as housing for the poorest of the poor flutter in the wind as the commuter trains clatter past the city's worst slums on their way to downtown Mumbai."

"China's millions of migrant workers are denied access to healthcare, education and good working conditions and are fast becoming an 'urban underclass.' A report by Amnesty International says China's economic boom is exacting a high price from an estimated 150-200 million rural migrants working in major cities.

Migrant labor is used to perform the lowest-paid and most dangerous jobs. A widespread lack of labor contracts leaves migrant workers with little legal recourse in disputes with employers. Migrants moving from rural to urban areas are required to register as temporary residents under the hukou system of household registration. Many struggle to fill in the required paperwork or to find the money for the fees and so end up living illegally in cities. Millions of migrant workers' children are also struggling to get a decent education."

"When the tsunami pounded the Andaman coast two years ago, thousands of migrant workers from Myanmar lived along the coast in Thailand's southern provinces. The giant waves wiped out thousands and forced families left behind to consider another fate. Two years on, and many are still searching for relatives. Many await the results of DNA tests on corpses kept at a morgue for unidentified bodies of tsunami victims.

Many of these workers who lost their registration cards along with their jobs in the tsunami have become an undocumented migrant worker in Thailand. No one knows exactly how many people died when the huge waves swept through, but only 193 bodies were identified as from Myanmar. Thousands of these migrant workers have returned to areas where they worked before that fateful day, and their plight continues."

"Ignoring the drizzle, boys between the ages of nine and 14 play football against the backdrop of a mound of rubble that was once their school. Now school is a row of dilapidated tents more than 16 months after the massive quake. The canvas is long past its intended life-span of about six months. The boys' furniture consisted of rows of stone slabs -- sometimes, just large stones -- piled on top of each other to serve as seats.

Almost 10,000 schools were damaged or destroyed in the quake, while more than 18,000 students and 850 teachers were killed. Various agencies had been building schools in the area, even though aid workers said many more were needed, urging the government to act swiftly. Many people have been left to deal with the situation on our own. More than 80,000 people were killed in the quake, tens of thousands maimed or injured, while more than three million people were rendered homeless."

"Economic problems and the eroding value of education for women have left increasing numbers of girls in Tajikistan illiterate with no employment opportunities outside the home. The number of girls aged 16 to 17 attending the final two school years has dropped by 12 percent since 1991. One reason for keeping girls out of school is that educated women are seen by some as unattractive marriage material -- they are less likely to assume the submissive role they are expected to assume towards the husband? entire family.

Although most parents who take their daughters out of school plead poverty, and this is undoubtedly a factor, the fact that sons from similar backgrounds are allowed to continue on to higher education shows the differing expectations attached to each sex."

"The plight of many displaced women in Indonesia is still dire despite billions of dollars in international assistance to relocated tsunami survivors to permanent housing. Isolated and alone, they face social instability, poverty and powerlessness -- conditions that could heighten their vulnerability to another possible tsunami that could sweep the nation -- HIV/AIDS.

The tsunami has intensified vulnerability among marginalized populations in what was previously an isolated region. Women accounted for about 55 percent to 70 percent of tsunami casualty figures, and they have suffered physical, social, economic and psychological harm and deprivation. After the disaster many women found themselves living in camps for displaced persons or barracks where they were alone, powerlessness and subject to increased domestic violence and other forms of abuse -- all conditions that could enhance the risk of HIV/AIDS."

"Young children in Papua New Guinea are being abandoned, left to flounder for themselves because they have been orphaned by the HIV/AIDS crisis. Left without parents or close relatives to care for them, they are struggling to survive. For those who are sheltering under somebody's roof, it is commonly found that they are not going to school. That's because families living in the major centers have enough of a battle to feed their immediate family members without having to take on extras.

Many have no way of caring for themselves and certainly struggle to pay fees for their schooling. Finding food and shelter is a big enough task for many. Life in the cities and towns these days means that such stranded children cannot always rely on the famed wantok system to rescue them. Mingled with this attitude is the feeling, often misplaced, that it is 'the children's fault' because their parents had died of HIV/AIDS related illness."

"Malnutrition rates for children in India remain among the highest in the world. The average malnutrition rate in some Indian states -- such as densely populated Uttar Pradesh -- is around 40%. Efforts to provide nutritious food to children have been constantly marred by corruption in which food intended for the poor is stolen or sold to other people.

Despite India's new-found prosperity, close to 300 million Indians still live on less than $1 a day. The number of undernourished children below the age of three has actually risen in some states since the late 1990s, despite higher incomes and rapid economic growth. Economists say that India's economy has grown at over 8% over the past three years and is expected to expand close to 9% in the fiscal year ending March 2007."

"This year the wheat crop again failed in the village of Houscha in western Afghanistan following a devastating drought. Families have become so hungry that they are 'selling' their daughters. Azizgul is 10 years old, and a little before Christmas, her mother 'sold' her to be married to a 13-year-old boy. Azizgul is not unique. Many families are doing this because of the drought.

The consequences of the first drought last year -- which saw the wheat crop cut by half -- have gone beyond child brides. Villagers suffer from malnutrition, increased infant mortality, and are forced to walk for three hours to collect water and firewood to survive. Aid supplies have been hampered by the winter snows, while the World Food Program's aid pipeline to areas like the Herat province has been hampered by attacks."