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The World of Children at a Glance

There are approximately 50 million uprooted people around the world— refugees who have sought safety in another country, and people displaced within their own country. Around half of this displaced population are children. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees cares for 22.3 million of these people. An estimated 10 million are children under the age of 18. The majority of people flee their homes because of war. It is estimated that more than two million children were killed in conflict in the last decade. Another six million are believed to have been wounded and one million orphaned. In recent decades the proportion of war victims who are civilians rather than combatants has leaped from five percent to more than 90 percent. Children in 87 countries live among 60 million land mines. As many as 10,000 per year continue to become victims of mines. More than 300,000 youths and girls currently are serving as child soldiers around the world. Many are less than 10 years old. Many girl soldiers are forced into different forms of sexual slavery. The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most important legal framework for the protection of children. The Convention has the highest number of state parties of any human rights treaty, being ratified by all countries except the United States and Somalia. Last year, the U.N. General Assembly approved two Optional Protocols to the Convention, one on the sale of children and child pornography and another establishing 18 as the minimum age for participation of children in hostilities. UNHCR has recognized the special needs of refugee children and youngsters uprooted in their own countries. In the last few years, the agency has introduced many new programs, expanded others and attempted to incorporate all of them into its operations. Children, whether accompanied by parents or on their own, account for as many as half of all asylum seekers in the industrialized world. In 1996, Canada became the first country with a refugee determination system to issue specific guidelines on children seeking asylum.

At any one time there may be up to 100,000 separated children in western Europe alone. As many as 20,000 separated children lodge asylum applications every year in Europe, North America and Oceania. Between 1994 and 1999, the U.N. requested $13.5 billion in emergency relief funding, much of it for children. It received less than $9 billion. The amount of assistance varied dramatically by region. Donors provided the equivalent of 59 U.S. cents per person per day for 3.5 million people in Kosovo and Southeastern Europe in 1999, compared with 13 cents per person per day for 12 million African victims. AIDS has killed more than 3.8 million children and orphaned another 13 million. In the last five years HIV/AIDS has become the greatest threat to children, especially in countries ravaged by war. In the worst affected countries, it is estimated that as many as half of today’s 15-year-olds will die from the disease. In 1998 donor countries allocated $300 million to combat AIDS, though an estimated $3 billion was needed. More than 67,000 children were reunited with their families in Africa’s Great Lakes region between 1994-2000, thanks to a global tracing program organized by humanitarian organizations. An estimated 45,000 households in Rwanda today are headed by children, 90 percent of them girls. School buildings, like teachers and children, have become deliberate targets in war. During the Mozambique conflict in the 1980s-90s, for instance, 45 percent of schools were destroyed. If developed countries met an agreed aid target of 0.7 percent of their gross national product, an extra $100 billion would be available to help the world’s poorest nations. An estimated 1.2 billion people worldwide survive on less than $1 per day. Half of them are children. Ten million children under the age of five die each year, the majority from preventable diseases and malnutrition. Around 40 million children each year are not registered at birth, depriving them of a nationality and a legal name.