At least one billion children suffer from poverty

The United Nations Children's Fund released its annual report that showed that at least one billion children, half of the world's population of children, suffer from poverty, violent conflict and the scourge of AIDS.

According to the UNICEF, the world leader in helping children, the conditions in effect deny them a childhood.

"Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood," said Carol Bellamy, UNICEF director.

"When half the world's children are growing up hungry and unhealthy, when schools have become targets and whole villages are being emptied by Aids, we've failed to deliver on the promise of childhood," UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy said at the report launch in London.

The children’s rights to a healthy and protected life, as laid out in 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, were imperiled, as a result of the governments’ failure to carry out human rights and economic reforms, UNICEF said.

The organization worked along with researchers from Britain's London School of Economics and Bristol University to gather statistics that painted a bleak picture of youth at risk in most of the world regions.

UNICEF report says that almost one billion children all over the world are denied at least one of seven commodities deemed essential: shelter, water, sanitation, schooling, information, healthcare and food.

Another scourge mentioned in the report was war.

According to the UNICEF, about half of the 3.6 million people killed in wars since 1990 were children.

Millions more have been displaced by wars and forced to take part as child soldiers.

Karin Landgren, the head of UNICEF's child protection program, said that while six million children have been injured in conflict, many more carried "scars less visible" from rape, loss and overall trauma.

"So many of the systems children normally rely on to keep them safe break down", she said in a video on the report's website.

Moreover, the report showed Aids as a growing threat to the world children, not just through HIV infection, but also due to the fact that millions have been orphaned by the disease.

UNICEF called on governments to adopt "a human rights-based approach" to social and economic development, and to bear in mind the effects on children when making policies.

The report also found that 640 million children lack adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health care services and 140 million have never been to school.

Moreover, "The State of the World's Children 2005" also stated that even children in rich countries were victims of rising poverty rates. It noted that in 11 of 15 industrialized nations, the proportion of children living in low-income households over the last decade had risen.

This list includes Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland, where poverty raised to 16.6 percent of all children in the late 1990s and early 2000s from 14.0 percent a decade earlier.