-The United Nations   Member States kicked off a three-day meeting at the United Nations in New York today with the aim of finding ways to improve living standards and employment for the more than one billion people worldwide living with disabilities. About 80 per cent of the people with disabilities are of working age and face physical, social, economic and cultural challenge to their access to education, skills development and employment, according...

-The Hindu The fatal consequences of having a routine midday meal for at least 22 children in Bihar's Saran district expose the chronic neglect of school education in a large part of India. That governments cannot find a small piece of land for a school and are unable to store food materials without the risk of contamination is a telling commentary on their commitment to universal primary education. The Bihar horror...

-The Hindu The National Food Security Ordinance, which President Pranab Mukherjee signed into law last week, has been touted as especially attentive to the needs of women and children. A closer inspection of the Ordinance, however, suggests otherwise - its provisions in fact ignore the distinct socio-economic roles of women and children in society. Moreover, the Ordinance glosses over entire subsets of women and children, including those who are arguably the...

-The Telegraph Children in government and public-funded schools across India will receive a weekly tablet of iron and folic acid to reduce anaemia under a programme to be launched this week. The initiative will cover about 60 million boys and girls enrolled in Classes VI to XII at government and aided schools, a senior health official said today. It will also cover 70 million out-of-school girls, aged 10 to 19, under the Integrated...

-Live Mint For the first time, tribal communities in India will have a say in implementation of projects that affect them In the last six months, two key milestones have been reached in India around the protection of Adivasi rights. The first milestone was a ruling by Supreme Court in April which gave Adivasi communities in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa the final say on plans by a subsidiary of Vedanta...