In politics, timing is everything. The same might be said for book publishing. The appearance of Towards a Nuclear Weapon Free World at this new moment of rich potential for nuclear disarmament is a stroke of fortune.

Many of us wonder what exactly literacy is and the role it plays in improving the lives of people on a daily basis. Literacy is a human right and can be considered a tool of personal empowerment: a means for social and human development. Educational opportunities depend on literacy. Thus, literacy is essential for eradicating poverty, improving the socio-economic status of communities, reducing child and maternal mortality rates, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and promoting sustainable development at the local, regional and national levels.

The attackers tied me up and raped me because I was fighting. About five of them did the same thing to me until one of the commanders who knew my father came and stopped them, but also took me to his house to make me his wife. I just accepted him because of fear and didn't want to say no because he might do the same thing to me too. This is the testimony of a young girl of 14 from Liberia as told to the Machel Review in a focus group conducted jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (OSRSG/CAAC).

With only six years to go before the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health, some countries have made encouraging progress, while many have stagnated, or worse, slipped backwards since the Millennium Declaration was adopted in 2000.

I remember trying to write a book report when I heard the first gunshots of my life; sounds that no child, anywhere in the world, should ever hear. I tried hard to concentrate on my homework assignment, worried what the teacher might say the next day. That was the last book report I did for almost two years of my life during the conflict in Bosnia.

The phrase human rights may be used in an abstract and philosophical sense, either as denoting a special category of moral claim that all humans may invoke or, more pragmatically, as the manifestation of these claims in positive law, for example, as constitutional guarantees to hold Governments accountable under national legal processes.