[CTRL] 100 Million Children Grow Up Alone

[Mrs. Jela Jovanovic, Secretary General]

-Caveat Lector-   <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-

===========================
The Committee for National Solidarity
Tolstojeva 34, 11000 Belgrade, YU

Poverty, war, AIDS force 100 million children to
grow up alone, UNICEF says

February 23, 2000
Web posted at: 10:35 p.m. EST (0335 GMT)

In this story:

Campaign highlights plight of children
AIDS killed 2 million in 1998
Effects of war on the young

>From staff and wire reports

LONDON -- More than 100 million children have to fend for themselves because
of poverty,
war and the loss of their parents from AIDS, says the United Nations
Children's Fund
(UNICEF).

"Be it in the West or the developing world, we are confronting grave
problems in the violation
of children's rights," Carol Bellamy, head of UNICEF, said Wednesday. "We
want to put a face
on this crisis, rather than just have people feel sorry for the little
children."

The UN organization is calling for governments and
international organizations to help poorer countries invest
more in health and education as part of a campaign to
protect those at risk of missing childhood.

Whether orphaned by disease, abused by adults or stolen for profit, the
world's children are
increasingly growing up without the love and security of a family and
outside the protection of
the state -- and are denied the basic rights due to any child, the
organization says.

Campaign highlights plight of children

       To draw attention to the plight of children, UNICEF'S
       UK Committee on Wednesday launched an 18-month
       campaign, Growing Up Alone: the hidden cost of
       disease, poverty and war.

       The first part of the campaign was the publication of a
       report on the hidden cost of poverty. Two more
       reports, on the effects on children of HIV/AIDS and
       war, will be published by UNICEF during the next 18
       months.

       The report released Wednesday says poverty is the
       major cause of children facing a future alone.

       "It is estimated there are more than 3 billion people in
       the world who live on less than $2 a day," Bellamy
       said. "Half of these are children and half of those are
       living on less than $1 a day."

       Such poverty takes a toll on children's health and
ability to attend school, Bellamy said. These children often become ones who
are most
exploited, she said.

Examples cited by the UNICEF UK committee's report include a baby abandoned
on a
doorstep; a child lost after the parents have fled their home; a girl sent
to perform menial work
in someone else's household; a boy with a one-way ticket into town; a
teenager in detention.

Such children are regularly found in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Central
and Eastern
Europe, the report said.

"Their aloneness is a child rights emergency every bit as serious as the
neglect, abandonment
and exploitation which children growing up alone frequently experience," the
report said.

"It is just as common and just as pernicious, although often obscured by
atrocities and other
gross abuses of child rights that attract instant attention."

AIDS killed 2 million in 1998

On the effects of AIDS on children, Bellamy said, "AIDS is turning
sub-Saharan Africa into a
killing field." She said war had killed 200,000 people in the region in
1998, while AIDS had
claimed 2 million lives the same year.

The UN report said that 13 million children would be orphaned by the end of
this year as a
result of AIDS.

"When AIDS strikes a family breadwinner, his or her income dries up and the
family quickly
slides into poverty as they struggle to pay for medicines and health care,"
the report said.

A downward economic spiral sets in, the report said, as children are forced
to leave school to
support the family. Children affected by AIDS not only have to deal with the
loss of their
parents to the disease, but also must cope with the trauma of social
isolation -- because of the
fear and stigma that surrounds the disease, the report said.

"Many children are bringing up younger brothers and sisters alone, without
support and sadly
many of them will also become ill," the report said.

Effects of war on the young

An estimated 300,000 children are engaged as child soldiers, Bellamy said,
adding that girls are
often employed as sex slaves.

"The children, even when they're not participating as soldiers, are moved on
or forced from
their communities," Bellamy said. "It has enormous psychological as well as
physical impact on
children."

The UNICEF UK committee said that in the 1990s 1 million children were
separated from their
families because of war.

In Afghanistan, for example, children are "witnesses to horrors we don't
want to talk about,"
said Louis-Georges Arsenault, the UNICEF representative for Afghanistan.

"It will be a long time before we can support these children, before they
can have some sort of
normal life," Arsenault added.

           Correspondent Margaret Lowrie and Reuters contributed to this
report.


Secretary General
Mrs. Jela Jovanovic
Art  historian
===========================

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