20000225

100 m children growing

up unprotected by family: Unicef

LONDON: Motherless babies, children forced onto the streets to work, and millions of other youngsters bring up without the security of a family pay a heavy price for poverty, Unicef said on Wednesday.

"Childhood itself is denied to them or, at least, badly damaged," said the report by the United Kingdom committee of Unicef.

Publication on Wednesday of "Growing Up Alone: The Hidden Cost of Poverty," began an 18-month campaign by Unicef to help an estimated 100 million children who it says are growing up outside the protection of a state or a family and are denied the basic rights of any child.

"Whether they are orphaned, unaccompanied, living on the street or working in servitude, their loneliness is at the heart of their predicament," the report says. It is the first of three reports focusing on the reasons children grow up in this way Ñ poverty, HIV/AIDS and war.

"We started out the 20th century where the victims of war were military," Unicef Executive Director Carl Bellamy told a news conference in London. "We've ended the 20th century where the victims of war are women and children.

AIDS is turning parts of Africa into "a killing field," she said, leaving a trail of 11 million "AIDS orphans," a figure expected to rise to 13 million within the year.

With 1.3 billion people worldwide living on less than $1 a day, poverty is a major cause of children facing a future alone.

The Unicef campaign is designed to draw attention to these childhoods and raise funds to prevent and repair the damage.

Many children "are in spiritual, mental and emotional solitary confinement," even if they are in institutions or part of a gang of street children, the report said.

When a family descends into poverty, "a girl may be 'sold' to another family who provide her with a home in return for heavy domestic duties. A boy may be sent off to a town hundreds of miles away in the hope that he makes good," the report said.

"Minor tragedies, such as illness or unemployment, become the final straw for poor families, and may mean a child has to leave school and go to work," Unicef said. "Missing out on education draws them further into the poverty cycle."

Poverty in central and Eastern Europe has left thousands of children abandoned in crumbling institutions, and in many countries children have to work in dangerous and often exploitative jobs, the report said.

Every year, 600,000 women die from preventable complications in childbirth and leave behind 1 million children who are at much greater risk of illness and malnutrition.

Children affected by AIDS not only have to deal with the loss of their parents to the disease, they must also face social isolation. Many are bringing up younger brothers and sisters alone, without support and many become ill themselves.

War in the 1990s has separated 1 million children from their families, the report said. During the last decade women and children have increasingly become targets of war. Many more will witness acts of extreme brutality.

Because of the way they live and work, street children are difficult to count, the report pointed out. But it said India was believed to have the most, with about 100,000 each in Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta.

In 23 countries seriously affected by AIDS, it was estimated that 25 million children will have been orphaned by 2000 from all causes. In Zambia, the report said, 54 percent of children already have lost one or both parents.ÑAP