Girls 'missing out on schooling'

The UN wants to achieve gender equality in primary education in 2005, as part of the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015.

There is evidence that more children are now going to school, Unicef says.

However, it adds that many countries in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East cannot meet the target this year.

Unicef is especially concerned about the situation in west and central Africa.

It says emergency measures are now needed to promote primary education.

Only five countries out of 24 are set to achieve gender equality there.

Conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo have done incalculable damage to children's education.

In South Asia, Unicef says, progress has been made, but not enough.

Across the region, 42 million children do not go to school.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have the widest gender gaps.

For Pakistan to have the same number of girls as boys in school by 2015, it would have to increase girls' school attendance by more than 3 percent each year.