2004-12-19
This is Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English Development
Report.
Some new reports about conditions in developing countries offer
little to celebrate.
Carol Bellamy of UNICEF says half of the more than two thousand
million children in the world "are growing up hungry and unhealthy."
The United Nations Children's Fund says the biggest threats are
poverty, war and HIV/AIDS.
The UNICEF report defines child poverty as the lack of at least
one of seven services needed to survive, grow and develop. These are
shelter, food, safe water, health care, clean living conditions,
education and information. UNICEF and British researchers found that
at least seven hundred million children lacked two or more of these
services.
The report also says almost half of all people killed in war
since nineteen ninety have been children. And, in some African
countries, the spread of AIDS has meant high child death rates and
shorter life expectancy.
UNICEF noted progress made under the Convention on the Rights of
the Child, a nineteen eighty-nine international treaty. But it says
these gains are threatened in several areas. In fact, it says child
poverty has also risen in some developed countries.
Carol Bellamy, the head of UNICEF, says too many governments are
making choices that "hurt childhood."
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported that at least
five million children each year die because of hunger and poor
nutrition. The F.A.O. says there were eight hundred fifty-two
million hungry people in the world between two thousand and two
thousand two. That number was up eighteen million from five years
before. The F.A.O. says hunger costs developing countries thousands
of millions of dollars a year in lost productivity and national
earnings.
Low wages were a subject for the International Labor
Organization. This U.N. agency says half of all workers earn less
than two dollars a day. The percentage is lower than in nineteen
ninety. Still, the number of people is estimated at a record one
thousand four hundred million.
Foreign aid might help with jobs. Yet the group Oxfam
International reported that the aid budgets of wealthy nations are
half what they were in nineteen sixty.
Next year, Britain will lead both the Group of Eight major
industrial nations and the European Union. The government has
promised to make the fight against world poverty one of its main
goals.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill
Moss. I'm Gwen Outen.