The Annual International Development Conference jointly presented by Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA) and International  Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Law at Laurentian University: Centre international de
recherche interdisciplinaire sur le droit (CIRID) providing a inter-disciplinary forum on global sustainable development for
 practitioners and academics. Conference serving as a forum to foster dialogue among various stakeholders, including
senior level policy makers, academics, and practitioners, the Conference proposes multidisciplinary strategies for economic, sociopolitical, cultural, and institutional changes.

Poverty hits children hardest. While a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human, it is most threatening to children’s
rights: survival, health and nutrition, education, participation, and protection from harm and exploitation. It creates an
environment that is damaging to children’s development in every way – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. More than
1 billion children are severely deprived of at least one of the essential goods and services they require to survive, grow and develop.
Some regions of the world have more dire situations than others, but even within one country there can be broad
disparities – between city and rural children, for example, or between boys and girls. An influx or tourism in one area may
improve a country’s poverty statistics overall, while the majority remains poor and disenfranchised. Poverty contributes
to malnutrition, which in turn is a contributing factor in over half of the under-five deaths in developing countries. 
Some 300 million children go to bed hungry every day. Of these only eight per cent are victims of famine or other
emergency situations. More than 90 per cent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.

Ontario Village Programs - Building communities around the world