UNICEF pledges to focus on child survival and other basic concerns in 2004

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today pledged to focus its efforts next year on helping the young to survive in a world where they are often caught up in war, ravaged by HIV/AIDS, imperilled by exploitation, and under-serviced by society.

“Each of these issues alone poses heartbreaking challenges for hundreds of millions of children,” UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said. “Together, they represent a global imperative to do more for children in 2004.”

Ms. Bellamy noted that nearly 11 million children die before their fifth birthday each year, and tens of millions more are left with physical and/or mental disabilities – solely because they lack the essentials to thrive. Measles, malaria and diarrhoea are three of the biggest killers – yet all are preventable or treatable.

HIV/AIDS has orphaned 14 million children, 11 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa, she added. By 2010, the number of children in that region who have lost parents to AIDS is expected to have risen to 20 million.

In the last decade alone, she continued, more than 2 million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict, and more than 6 million have been permanently disabled or seriously injured. An estimated 20 million children have been forced to flee their homes and more than 1 million have been orphaned or separated from their families.

Abuse, exploitation and violence extinguish the childhoods of hundreds of millions of children, with 246 million working, 171 million of them in hazardous conditions. Some 1.2 million are trafficked every year, and 2 million, mainly girls, are believed to be exploited through the commercial sex trade. At any given time, over 300,000 child soldiers, some as young as eight, are exploited in armed conflicts in over 30 countries around the world.

Ms. Bellamy also charged that too many governments – in both rich and poor countries – fail to recognize that investing in children means investing in the future of their countries.

Education is the single best way to tackle all these problems over the long term, she added. “By making sure that all boys and girls get a basic education, we will not only give them a chance of growing into independent adults who can protect their own health and rights, but we will give the next generation of children a better chance of escaping a life of poverty and hardship,” Ms. Bellamy said.