The UN children’s fund will spend at least €28m to help Sri Lankan children affected by the tsunami disaster to regain their future.

Aid workers in one of history’s largest relief efforts today struggled to get food, water and medicine to survivors of the massive quake and tsunamis that the Red Cross says likely killed more than 100,000 people across Asia and Africa.

WAR, poverty and HIV/AIDS cause more than half the world's children to suffer, effectively denying them a childhood, according to a new UN report.

One in four children in Sierra Leone dies before the age of five, and one in 10 in Iraq.

The UN Security Council joined the United States and Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday in demanding the immediate and unconditional release of the Moscow school hostages.

The global battle to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children hit by measles is set to succeed, the World Health Organisation and UNICEF said today.

President Mary McAleese has warned that HIV and AIDS are eroding the progress made by developing countries throughout the world in recent years.

Peter Ustinov was remembered today as a great actor and humorist who made a difference to the world through his good works for children.

TENS of millions of people die and 20 million children are born mentally impaired every year because of a lack of vitamins and minerals in their diet — a problem that could be solved at the cost of a few cent per person, the UN Children’s Fund said yesterday.

Some 65 million girls worldwide are kept out of school, increasing the risks that they will suffer from extreme poverty, die in childbirth or from Aids and pass those dangers from generation to generation, the UN children’s fund said today.

Aids has already orphaned more than 11 million African children under the age of 15, and “the worst is yet to come,” a report issued by the UN Children’s Fund warned today.

Grammy Award-winning musician Shakira has been appointed a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.

THE top US official in Iraq went north yesterday, meeting with an American-installed city council in Mosul and surveying the challenges he faces in getting that ethnically volatile section of the country moving once again.

DESPITE the growing likelihood of a US-led war in Iraq, 14,000 health workers will fan out across the country next week to immunise more than four million children against polio.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the first UN children’s summit today with a stinging rebuke to ‘‘the grown-ups’’ of the world for failing ‘‘deplorably’’ to uphold the right of every child to grow up free of poverty and war and to receive a quality education.

The United Nations children’s agency today urged both sides in the Mideast conflict to stop fighting and seek peace, for their sake of their children.