Scarletwine
New Yorker
They are a billion strong. Diseased, malnourished, uneducated, they are a people on the run from wars that take the lives of their brothers and sisters. And they are all children - half the children on earth today.
In shocking revelations yesterday, the grim reality of daily life for the world's innocent generation was laid bare. More than one billion children are now being denied the healthy and protected upbringing promised by the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. For them - the forgotten masses - violence, poverty and Aids are all that the year's end will bring. In Darfur in Sudan, wretched shivering souls wait for their parents in refugee camps. In Haiti, they huddle in shelters, having lost homes and parents to floods. In Iraq, they trample through the rubble of bombed-out homes.
More than one in six children is severely hungry. One in seven has no access to health care.
Despite debt reduction schemes and the vast sums of cash donated by individuals around the world, one factor keeps more than a billion children in a state of poverty. And that factor is war - usually over natural resources such as diamonds, oil and coltan, a mineral used in mobile phones, which are exported to the West.
As two reports showed yesterday, perhaps the most chilling statistic of all is the number of young lives snatched by conflict. Since 1990, 3.6 million people have been killed on the front line in wars around the word - almost half of them were children.
Survival, though, is merely the start of further great struggles to reach maturity. A billion continue to be "denied a childhood" - 20 million are forced from homes and communities by fighting. The world's political leaders are failing them, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef). Governments are not delivering on long-held promises to protect their rights.
At least 640 million children do not have adequate shelter, while 140 million have never been to school. Safe water is something that 400 million children are denied while 500 million live without basic sanitation. And 90 million starved.
...
What can I say.
efited to URL
http://207.44.245.159/article7454.htm
In shocking revelations yesterday, the grim reality of daily life for the world's innocent generation was laid bare. More than one billion children are now being denied the healthy and protected upbringing promised by the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. For them - the forgotten masses - violence, poverty and Aids are all that the year's end will bring. In Darfur in Sudan, wretched shivering souls wait for their parents in refugee camps. In Haiti, they huddle in shelters, having lost homes and parents to floods. In Iraq, they trample through the rubble of bombed-out homes.
More than one in six children is severely hungry. One in seven has no access to health care.
Despite debt reduction schemes and the vast sums of cash donated by individuals around the world, one factor keeps more than a billion children in a state of poverty. And that factor is war - usually over natural resources such as diamonds, oil and coltan, a mineral used in mobile phones, which are exported to the West.
As two reports showed yesterday, perhaps the most chilling statistic of all is the number of young lives snatched by conflict. Since 1990, 3.6 million people have been killed on the front line in wars around the word - almost half of them were children.
Survival, though, is merely the start of further great struggles to reach maturity. A billion continue to be "denied a childhood" - 20 million are forced from homes and communities by fighting. The world's political leaders are failing them, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef). Governments are not delivering on long-held promises to protect their rights.
At least 640 million children do not have adequate shelter, while 140 million have never been to school. Safe water is something that 400 million children are denied while 500 million live without basic sanitation. And 90 million starved.
...
What can I say.
efited to URL
http://207.44.245.159/article7454.htm
Last edited: