2 October 2017 - Kinshasa - For the past few weeks, Central African Republic (CAR) cities such as Zemio have evolved from battlefields for rival rebel groups to ghost towns.

The Cross River government has said that henceforth any child found roaming the streets or any public centre in the Calabar metropolis would be arrested.

Swaziland has the world's highest HIV/Aids rate, leaving some 69,000 orphans.

Response to the needs of vulnerable children in Nigeria, especially in such vital areas as education, health, shelter and care, legal protection, food and nutrition, psychosocial support and household economic strengthening has been quit ineffective. This has made communities and households providing the safety net to these children live in perpetual struggle to cope with the high burden of care required by such vulnerable children.

Speakers at a high-level meeting in New York urged the international community to improve the quality and standard of care for vulnerable children.

Children from across the country have called on the government to be more responsive and proactive in addressing the needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), who are among the most affected by the collapse in the provision of social services.

Orphans and vulnerable children from more than 80,000 households in Zimbabwe are set to benefit from a three-year government and donor-funded programme to cushion them from the worst effects of poverty.

Tens of thousands of Zimbabwean orphans and otherwise vulnerable children will benefit from cash transfers, educational aid and protection services under a new Government programme launched in partnership with the United Nations and international donors.

At the UN today, international commitment to protect children in times of conflict was strengthened.

The governments of the Republic of Congo and Benin have signed a land mark agreement to protect children from child trafficking, which in recent years has become a major problem in the Congo.