Poverty, war and HIV/AIDS threaten half the world’s children
NEW YORK/LONDON, 9 December 2004 - UNICEF’s Executive Director Carol Bellamy officially released UNICEF’s flagship report, The State of the World’s Children 2005, at the London School of Economics.
This year the focus is on the triple threat to childhood which is posed by poverty, war and HIV/AIDS. Backed by in-depth statistics on children around the globe, the report says that more than 1 billion children are denied the healthy and safe upbringing promised by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989 and ratified by nearly all governments around the world.
The report stresses that the failure by governments to live up to the Convention’s standards causes permanent damage to children and blocks progress toward human rights and economic advancement.
© Philipp Ebeling
London School of Economics, London. UNICEF launch of SOWC press conference
“Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood,” Bellamy said. “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.”
Bellamy was accompanied at the launch by UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Vanessa Redgrave, Professor Peter Townsend of the London School of Economics, and 18-year-old Temidayo Israel-Abdulai, a youth activist from Nigeria.
Working with researchers at the London School of Economics and Bristol University, 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:
640 million children do not have adequate shelter
500 million children have no access to sanitation
400 million children do not have access to safe water
300 million children lack access to information (TV, radio or newspapers)
270 million children have no access to health care services
140 million children, the majority of them girls, have never been to school
90 million children are severely food deprived
“The quality of a child’s life depends on decisions made every day in households, communities and in the halls of government,” Bellamy said. “We must make these choices wisely, and with children’s best interests in mind. If we fail to secure childhood, we will fail to reach our larger global goals for human rights and economic development. As children go, so go nations. It’s that simple.”
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Carol Bellamy's Quote.
“Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood,” Bellamy said. “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.”
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