Keeping Kenyan girls in school helps reduce HIV.

Reducing the school dropout rate for girls in Kenya and providing adequate HIV/AIDS and sex education could reduce HIV incidence in the country, experts said recently. “Young people do not have the information they need, and the dropout rate, particularly for girls, is still too high,” Rosemarie Muganda-Onyando, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Adolescence in Nairobi, Kenya, told IRIN News. “Dropping out of school ensures a life of poverty for these girls, and many of them also wind up HIV-positive because the male-female power dynamics become even more slanted against them.” In 2003, Kenya introduced no-cost primary school education, but an estimated 1 million school-age children still are not attending school. In addition, up to 13,000 Kenyan girls drop out of school annually as a result of pregnancy, and about 17 percent of girls have had sex before age 15. HIV prevalence among Kenyan women between ages 15 and 24 is about 5 percent, compared with 1 percent for their male counterparts, IRIN News reports. According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey of 2004, educated girls were less likely to marry early and more likely to practice family planning. In addition, their children had a higher survival rate. UNICEF also found that uneducated girls are more likely to contract HIV, compared with girls who have had some schooling.

The U.N. extended its Darfur peacekeeping mission. The Security Council on Thursday extended by one year the mandate of the joint United Nations-African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in the strife-torn western Sudanese region of Darfur. With 14 votes in favor and an abstention by the United States, a resolution was adopted to extend the mission known as UNAMID – which was authorized by the Council exactly one year ago – for another 12 months to 31 July 2009. The current mandate expired Thursday night. “The United States abstained because language added to the resolution would send the wrong signal to Sudanese President [Omar al-] Bashir” and undermine efforts to bring him to justice, U.S. Ambassador Alejandro D. Wolff told the 15-member panel after the vote. Earlier this month, Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that he is seeking an arrest warrant for Mr. Bashir for “criminal responsibility in relation to 10 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.” Since taking over from an AU peace-monitoring mission at the start of this year, UNAMID has just under 10,000 uniformed personnel in place, far short of the approximately 26,000 troops and police officers expected when the force reaches full deployment. A report by a group of non-governmental organizations this week found that the peacekeeping mission faces critical shortages in troops, other personnel, helicopters, equipment and logistics. The report indicates that there are not enough troops, helicopters or other equipment for the force to be effective.

TAGS: Darfur, girls, HIV, Kenya, Nations, Peacekeepers, Sudan, United

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