With more than one in 10 of the world’s children living in areas affected by armed conflict, the United Nations children’s agency said Thursday that it is struggling to deal with “a new generation of emergencies.” Natural disasters, fast-spreading epidemics and conflicts “are stalking children in ways we have never seen before,” Afshan Khan, Unicef’s director of emergency programs, said in a statement accompanying an appeal for financial support.

It's been the social media hit of the summer — some of the world's biggest celebrities dousing themselves with buckets of ice water to raise money for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Like an increasing number of tourists visiting Nepal's mountain peaks, colourful markets and lush national parks, Marina Argeisa wanted to experience the latest must-do activity on the tourist trail: a volunteering stint at an orphanage. What the 26-year-old Spaniard did not know was that her good intentions were unwittingly feeding an industry that dupes poor parents into sending their children to bogus orphanages in order to extract money from well-meaning foreigners.

Health agencies are warning of an “alarming” increase in AIDS-related deaths among adolescents, a new front line in the fight against a global epidemic that has waned in recent years. This worrying new trend is a setback for efforts to eradicate the virus, according to a United Nations report released ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1. Among youth aged 10 to 19, deaths linked to AIDS increased by 50 percent between 2005 and 2012, compared with a 30 percent decline seen in the general population.

When it comes to what actually delivers improvements in the lives of poor children in developing countries – and what doesn’t – the people who know best tend to live in developing countries. They live with the problem and their lives are directly affected by their success – or failure – in developing the solutions. South-South cooperation is the process of sharing knowledge between governments and people in developing countries.

UNICEF Ambassador and National Basketball Association (NBA) star Pau Gasol, returned today to Barcelona, Spain following a visit with Syrian refugees in Iraq. More than 1.7 million people - of which around 50 percent are children- have fled the armed conflict in Syria into neighboring countries, including more than 160,000 in Iraq.

The kindergarten is in a traditional Mongolian ger, with a thick quilted lining and a carpet on the floor. Children’s pictures are pinned to the wooden frame. Outside, it is raining, and heavy clouds blanket the hills. The ger is pitched in the middle of a wide, flat valley. Some children arrive on foot, with older brothers carrying them across a river. Others arrive with their parents on horseback, motorbike or tractor.