Photos

Angita Emerentienne, age 9, lives in Marolondo, Madagascar. She has been studying in a tent since her classroom was destroyed by a cyclone in 2008. This week's Monday photo was taken on the first day of the new school year. This is what Angita had to say:

Some things change: I will be in third grade this year.

Three weeks after this photo was taken, the humanitarian situation in Pakistan remains dire. This photo of a submerged city in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the north-western provinces--where the massive flooding began--is being replicated throughout the flood zone. Punjab, Balochistan, and now Sindh province, have since been innundated. In all, 1/5 of the country is under water.

Three weeks after this photo was taken, the humanitarian situation in Pakistan remains dire. This photo of a submerged city in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the north-western provinces--where the massive flooding began--is being replicated throughout the flood zone. Punjab, Balochistan, and now Sindh province, have since been innundated. In all, 1/5 of the country is under water.

Elizabeth Kiem is the online producer for unicefusa.org.
On or around this day in 1791, the slaves of Saint Domingue revolted, sparking a bloody uprising that would lead to the end of legalized slavery in the Western Hemisphere and the beginning of the world's first republic governed by former slaves--Haiti. If you've come across references to today's being the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, that's why.

You may have heard from news reports that the flooding in Pakistan is the worst humanitarian disaster to hit the country in recent memory.

But it's worse than that. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who visited the disaster zone over the weekend, is calling it the worst disaster he has ever seen. Period.

After several days observing the plight of the thousands of families affected by poverty and displacement, it's a fine feeling to have something to dance about.

This week's Monday photo catches UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow joining the celebration at the African Youth Forum in Entebbe, Uganda. Mia addressed the first ever official gathering of young people in conjunction with the African Union Summit.

Tyler Lewis is an intern at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. This is her first post on Field Notes.
Could you find Kyrgyzstan on an unlabeled map? Could you differentiate it from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan or Kazakhstan? I for one--when first hearing that ethnic fighting had claimed hundreds of lives and displaced nearly 400,000 people there --couldn't even picture the country in my head.

As thousands of refugees from the ethnic fighting in Kyrgyzstan begin to return to their homes, many others are still taking shelter in camps across the border in Uzbekistan. This week's photo is of children taking respite from the heat in a camp in the Pakhtaabad district of Uzbekistan.

Elizabeth Kiem is the online producer of unicefusa.org.
Every year, June 16 is commemorated throughout Africa and around the world as the Day of the African Child, in honor of the children who bravely stood for their rights during the 1976 Soweto uprising.
Our Monday photo captures the changes that have since altered the lives of children in Soweto, where the struggle against Apartheid has been replaced with many other struggles: poverty, HIV-AIDS and violence.

Judith, age 15, lost her mother to the earthquake in Haiti in January. Today she and her fellow students support each other through their grief at one of hundreds of schools that have re-opened with UNICEF support. It is one a very few public schools in Haiti, where 90 percent of schools are private. 38,000 students and 1,300 teachers are estimated to have died in the earthquake.

On the day of the quake, Ms. Lambert, our School Director, sent us home early because she had heard that not far from our school a university teacher had been killed and there was fear of rioting.