UNICEF’s report on The State of the World’s Children 2002 calls on world leaders to work harder to improve the lives of children and families, presenting a ‘snapshot’ of the key characteristics of a random group of 100 children born at the beginning of the 1990s.

Of this group:
• 55 children would have been born in Asia (19 of them in India, and 18 in China); 16 in sub-Saharan Africa; 8 in Latin America and the Caribbean; 7 in the Middle East and North Africa; 6 in CEE/CIS and Baltic States, and 8 in industrialised countries.
• The births of 33 of the children have not been registered, and so they have no official existence or recognition of nationality.
• Nine of these children died before the age of five. Around 32 suffered from malnutrition, and 27 have not been immunised against any diseases.
• 18 of the children do not attend school: 11 of them are girls.
• 18 have no access to safe drinking water, and 39 live without sanitation.

Highlighting some of the successes and failures of the last decade, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy urged leaders to honour the promises made at the 1990 World Summit for Children: “Ensuring the rights and well being of children is the key to sustained development in a country, and to peace and security in the world,” she said.

www.unicef.org.uk