By Malcolm Brabant

LAYYAH DISTRICT, Pakistan, 7 April 2011 – Pakistan’s catastrophic flooding last summer is leading to a change in attitudes towards sending girls to school.

VIDEO: UNICEF’s Malcolm Brabant reports on changing attitudes towards education for girls in rural Pakistan.

© UNICEF/NYHQ2011-0223/LeMoyne
On 1 February 2011 in Egypt, adolescent girls and young women demande political change, taking part in a mass public demonstration in Tahrir Square in Cairo.

By Anna Azaryeva

NEW YORK, USA, 25 February 2011 – This week UNICEF launches the State of the World’s Children Report. This year’s report entitled Adolescence. An Age of Opportunity focuses on the 1.2 billion young people around the world aged ten to nineteen. The vast majority of them live in developing countries and face a unique set of challenges and opportunities.

© UNICEF/NYHQ2009-0508/ParadelaChildren wait with their families to register at the Jalala camp in Mardan district, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

Last year in Afghanistan there were nearly 300 documented attacks on schools, killing 92 people and injuring 169. In Pakistan, 172 government and private schools, particularly girls’ schools, have been destroyed in the Swat Valley district since 2007.