December 9, 2004
Over 1 billion of world's children in poverty: UNICEF
Kyodo

More than half of the world's children are suffering from poverty, conflict and HIV/AIDS, effectively denying them a childhood, according to a report by UNICEF released in London on Thursday.

(Kyodo) _ More than half of the world's children are suffering from poverty, conflict and HIV/AIDS, effectively denying them a childhood, according to a report by UNICEF released in London on Thursday.

Speaking at the launch of "The State of the World's Children 2005," U.N. Children's Fund Executive Director Carol Bellamy said more than 1 billion children are denied the healthy and protected upbringing promised by 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

She said, "Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood. Poverty doesn't come from nowhere; war doesn't emerge from nothing; AIDS doesn't spread by choice of its own. These are our choices."

"When half the world's children are growing up hungry and unhealthy, when schools have become targets and whole villages are being emptied by AIDS, we've failed to deliver on the promise of childhood."

Working with several British universities, UNICEF concluded that more than half the children in the developing world are severely deprived of one or more of the goods and services essential to childhood, such as adequate shelter, sanitation and safe water.

The report calls on the world's leaders to do more in order to assist youngsters whose childhoods are blighted by poverty, conflict and HIV/AIDS.

According to the study, one in six children is severely hungry, one in seven has no health care at all and one in five has no safe water supply.

Millions of children are growing up in families and communities torn by conflict, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, HIV/AIDS has led to increasing child mortality rates, dramatic reductions in life expectancy and millions of orphans, UNICEF says.

Around 15 million children under the age of 18 were orphaned by the pandemic by the end of 2003, and eight out of 10 live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The report warns that unless swift action is taken, it is estimated that by 2010 over 18 million African children will have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.

To improve the current situation, UNICEF calls on governments around the world to increase their official development assistance, ensure universal access to basic social and educational services, and also to increase funding in these areas.

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