The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and its partners are expanding help to more vulnerable children in Burkina Faso. They are providing school materials to 10,000 children this year, up from 850 in 2000. Parents of many of these children died of AIDS. Only about a third of children in Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest countries, are enrolled in primary school.

A total of 165,000 of Burkinabe child migrants between 6 and 17 years old have migrated to work while 9.5 percent of Burkinabe children 6-17 years old were found to live outside the proximity of their parents, according to a recent study by the World Bank. The objectives of the study were to identify how many children were involved in child migration from rural areas in Burkina Faso, to establish why the children migrate and also where the high risk areas were for child migration.

Burkina Faso has at least 165,000 migrant labourers aged six to 17 years and half of them work abroad - mainly in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Benin - a study on child labour migration shows. Most of the young migrant labourers were boys, according to the study by the NGO Terre des Hommes and the World Bank.

Burkina Faso is benefiting from a total of 2,100 dams in low-lying areas of the country to harvest rain run-off for use during the cropping season and provide fishery resources for local people.

Burkina Faso had made a serious commitment to improving children's rights and had enjoyed some success in doing so, but was constrained by poverty and cultural resistance among other factors, United Nations child rights experts heard this week.

Responding to low levels of basic education and a high rate of illiteracy, the West African country of Burkina Faso last week launched a programme to raise school enrolment throughout the country from 40 to 70 percent by 2010.

The EU has agreed to provide Burkina Faso with 16 million euro (US $15.9 million) for water management activities aimed at reducing rural poverty, and to support the private sector.

The EU has agreed to provide Burkina Faso with 16 million euro (US $15.9 million) for water management activities aimed at reducing rural poverty, and to support the private sector.

The EU and France have agreed to fund rural development projects in Burkina Faso under separate agreements with the West African country. Five provinces in western Burkina Faso are to benefit from a five-year project under which the EU is to provide 10.01 million euro (US $9.89 million) to promote rural empowerment and economic activity for local development, strengthening the delivery of social services and encouraging sustainable management of natural resources.

Burkina Faso launched last Saturday a three-year anti-malaria initiative with an appeal to international health organisations for more funding for the seven-billion-CFA (US $1 million) programme.

Hard hit by insufficient rainfall, Burkina Faso launched on Tuesday "Operation Saaga" in which it is using two planes to drop chemicals into the clouds to induce rain. "Saaga" means rain in local languages.

A US $30-million poverty alleviation project aimed at improving agricultural output in areas near Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, was launched at the weekend by the African Development Bank (ADB) and the Burkinabe government.

An initiative aimed at financing activities that promote human rights was launched on Friday in Burkina Faso by UN Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative Christian Lemaire. "UNDP's support for such initiatives aims at enabling local action in favour of human rights for a sustainable improvement to the daily life of Burkina Faso's populations," Lemaire said at the launch of the programme in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou.

Burkina Faso and the Netherlands government signed an agreement on Thursday, in which the Dutch government would provide 21 billion cfa (US $30 million) to support a three year poverty reduction strategy.

United Nations Volunteers (UNV) has announced that it will run a five-year project aimed at transforming the lives of some 1,200 disadvantaged children in Burkina Faso's towns. So far, the project has received US $2,2 million from Luxembourg and close to $300,000 in kind from the government of Burkina Faso.

United Nations Volunteers (UNV) has announced that it will run a five-year project aimed at transforming the lives of some 1,200 disadvantaged children in two of Burkina Faso's towns, Bobo-Dioulasso and Hounde.

Burkina Faso will host meningitis experts to a meeting in July to discuss and adopt a global response to recurrent outbreaks of the disease, says Jean Gabriel Wango, Secretary General of the Health Ministry. Burkina Faso says an outbreak of the disease earlier this year is now under control."We can say that the most difficult period has gone," Wango said. "Since 19 May, Burkina Faso has been out of an epidemic situation."

Denmark has reduced aid to Burkina Faso over allegations of violations of a UN arms embargo against Sierra Leone and Angola, and what it called slow progress in investigations into the death of journalist Norbert Zongo.

The Government of Burkina Faso should immediately investigate allegations made by the Burkinabe Human and Peoples' Rights Movement(MBDHP) that 106 extra judicial executions have taken place over the past three months, Amnesty International said after raising its concerns to the government.

Three years ago, on 13 December 1998, Norbert Zongo, director of the weekly newspaper "L'Indépendant", was murdered on a road in southern Burkina Faso. RSF is stunned that the investigation is not progressing. The people behind the murder have not been troubled, thereby reinforcing the feeling that the justice system in Burkina Faso is seriously flawed.