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Billion children need help
Tens of thousands die daily from preventable diseases, millions forced to work — two decades after the UN adopted a treaty guaranteeing children's rights.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:00 November 21, 2009
- Image Credit: AP
- A Palestinian child with a painted face looks on during an event organised by Unicef to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday. Investigators found that the natural process of cell ageing by which protective "caps" on the end of chromosomes, called telomeres, are worn away as humans age was accelerated among adults who had suffered trauma in childhood.
United Nations: Unicef urged the world to help the one billion children still deprived of food, shelter, clean water or health care and the hundreds of millions more threatened by violencetwo decades after the UN adopted a treaty guaranteeing children's rights.
The UN children's agency issued a report on the challenges ahead and the accomplishments since the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.
Unicef Executive Director Ann Veneman called a sharp decline in child deaths a "remarkable achievement," and lauded the increasing number of children attending primary school.
More than 70 countries have used the treaty to incorporate children's rights in their national laws, she said.
Much to be done
Still, much remains to be done. Veneman said it was unacceptable that more than 24,000 children under the age of 5 die every day from preventable causes like pneumonia, malaria, measles and malnutrition.
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Nearly 200 million youngsters are chronically malnourished, more than 140 million are forced to work, and millions of girls and boys are subjected to sexual violence.
Between 500 million and 1.5 billion children are estimated to experience violence annually. Children in Africa and Asia suffer the worst. "The challenge for the next 20 years is to build on the progress achieved," Veneman said.
What it has done
The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989, has the widest support of any human rights treaty — 193 countries.
The convention ensures children of the right to a name, a nationality, an education, the highest possible standards of health, protection from abuse and exploitation, and the right to have their views heard.
The number of deaths of children under 5 decreased from around 12.5 million in 1990 to an estimated 8.8 million in 2008 — a 28 per cent decline.
The number of children not attending primary school also dropped, from 115 million in 2002 to 101 million in 2007.
Afghanistan remains the world's worst place to be born with an infant mortality rate of 257 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Is it time the authorities shifted their attention to the silent killers? What could be done to raise awareness about conventional illnesses, such as diarrhea? Tell us by clicking on the “Post a comment” link below.
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