December 9, 2004
World's children suffer under poverty, disease, war: new UNICEF report
Canadian Press

Poverty, AIDS and wars are taking a savage toll on children around the world even though progress has been made in improving their lot in certain other areas, the head of UNICEF Canada says.

PAUL LOONG

TORONTO (CP) - Poverty, AIDS (news - web sites) and wars are taking a savage toll on children around the world even though progress has been made in improving their lot in certain other areas, the head of UNICEF (news - web sites) Canada says.

Every year, the United Nations (news - web sites) Children's Fund releases a report on the state of the world's children. The latest report, released Thursday, focuses on how poverty, AIDS and various armed conflicts threaten the whole idea of childhood as a precious time for children to grow and learn.

"These are not the only factors that undermine childhood, but they are certainly among the most significant, with profound damaging effects on a child's chances of survival and development," says the UNICEF report entitled Childhood Under Threat.

"The rights of over one billion children are violated because they are denied one or more of the basic services required to survive, grow and develop," it says - referring to adequate shelter, sanitation, safe water, access to information, health care, education and adequate food.

Similar concerns have surfaced in previous years, so has anything changed?

"If you step back and look at the big sweep of history, yes, it's getting better," David Agnew, president and chief executive of Toronto-based UNICEF Canada, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Polio (news - web sites), once a dreaded childhood disease, is close to being eradicated, he said.

"We are down to a handful of countries, down to less than 1,000 cases, we hope. So that's dramatic and very exciting progress."

Another improvement is in the number of people who have access to clean water - critical for the health and survival, especially for children.

"There is a billion more people today who have access to clean water than 10 years ago," Agnew said.

But several "very troubling" threats continue to pose a daunting challenge.

"One is that the disparities in some countries are growing," Agnew said.

"Even in a majority of the industrialized countries that we looked at, the rate of child poverty has actually increased in the last decade."

The report mentions that only four developed countries - Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States - have fewer children living in low-income households now than in the late 1980s.

But Canada is not entirely off the hook.

A chart in the report shows Canada's child-poverty rate, at 15 per cent, is higher than most of the developed countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD.

And the anti-poverty group Campaign 2000 released a report last month in Toronto saying the child-poverty rate in Canada rose in 2002 despite a strong economy. It was the first increase after five straight years of decline.

The UNICEF report says HIV (news - web sites)/AIDS is "tearing at the very fabric of childhood" in the world.

The spread of AIDS is "hollowing out countries in sub-Saharan Africa," Agnew said.

"It is growing in other countries around the world. It is catastrophic."

The report says the disease has left about 15 million children under the age of 18 as orphans by the end of 2003. Eight out of every 10 of these orphans lived in sub-Saharan Africa.

"And of course we are seeing the impact of conflict, many of which are not wars between countries but civil wars, rebellions," he said.

Children are often among the casualties of armed conflicts, or they are abducted, orphaned, dislocated, forcibly recruited, abused and exploited in the violent environment.

"The impact on children has just been horrific," Agnew said.

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