Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - In its annual State of the World’s Children Report 2006 ,Excluded and Invisible,, UNICEF the United Nations Fund for Children analyses the situation of children and adolescents living in the most difficult conditions and explores the causes of the exclusion and maltreatment suffered by children. The root causes of exclusion, extreme poverty, bad government, armed conflict, HIV/AIDS, inequality and discrimination - have even more damaging consequences than the exclusion of children from essential services because they favour conditions which expose children to the greater danger of being exploited or abandoned, becoming victims of abuse or human trafficking. Neglect of the principle of legality which often occurs in armed conflict exposes children to violence and sexual exploitation. Besides being excluded from education, children orphaned or rendered vulnerable by HIV/AIDS are more exposed to discrimination and abandonment on the part of their community.
Child traffickers find their victims among poor children in slums not in rich districts. Children who are “visible” in their families, communities and societies when their rights are fully respected and they can rely on essential services and protection from dangers, disappear from everyone’s sight and become “invisible” when deprived of the attention of parents or exposed to violence or abuse, when they do not attend school, are forced to work or are exploited in other ways, or made to assume prematurely the role of adults with matrimony, work or involvement in armed conflict.
An estimated 2 million of the world’s children are victims of sexual exploitation, “hidden from the eyes of their exploiters, denied education and essential services. Children subject to this sort of abuse are perhaps the most invisible of all”. In the world about 171 million children are forced to work in dangerous conditions with unsafe machinery, in mines and in agriculture. In Latin America and the Caribbean about 11% of children aged 5 to 14 work. According to an official study on street children (Estudio de Niños Callejeros) 11,172 children live and work on the streets in Mexico City. They work in bad conditions, are denied access to school, healthcare and other basic services necessary for their development. The Report underlines disparity of income as a threat to children’s development. In Latin America which presents the highest disparity of family income in the developing world, “Peru is the country with the largest gap in the mortality rate of children under 5 where children in the poorest districts are five times more likely to die before their reach the age of 5 than children who belong to the rich 20%”.
The report says the infant mortality rate of minors under 5 is 31 for every 1,000 in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Haiti the figure rises to 117 and in Bolivia to 69. About 9% of Latin America and Caribbean babies are born underweight while in industrialised countries the rate is 7%. Children and adolescents denied access to basic services are the most vulnerable to exploitation because they have less information to protect themselves and less economic alternatives. Unless more attention is given to invisible children”, they will continue to be “forgotten prisoners of a children ruled by abandon and maltreatment which can have devastating consequences for the wellbeing and the development of the countries in which they live.” (RZ) (Agenzia Fides 16/12/2005, righe 43, parole 621)
