Poverty hits young people. Roughly half the population living in a destitution condition is represented by young people of eighteen years old or minors (47%). That’s what is reported in a recent analysis by the European Parliament. Young people who live in social exclusion conditions, victims of abuse and violence, in particular girls and young women. 300 thousand children are estimated to be child soldiers.
Children soldiers and armed conflicts
In the last decade around two million children soldiers died and 6 million remained maimed. While around 20 million minors are displaced or refugees, at least one million of them are orphans, while others are hostages, kidnapped or victims of human trafficking. Children who live without parents, education, someone taking care of them, health care, and basic social services. The guide on children rights of the EU External Action Service (EEAS) affirms the EU aims to follow up with the short term and long term needs of children of post-armed conflict : the reintegration into a normal life, the disarming, a social reintegration and a psycho-physical rehabilitation. Even if the infant death rate under five years old remains high, in 2012 53 deaths to 1 thousand live births were recorded, while in 1990 the rate was around 99 deaths to 1 thousand live births. Furthermore, everyday 18 thousand children die before their fifth birthday: the aim to reduce to two third the infantile rate death by 2015 seems still far. Quite often children die from lack of sufficient access to food, from lack of safe water and sanitation, from lack of basic health services, including sexual and maternal. But few steps in the global fight on malnutrition have been made : in 1990 children underweight were 160 million, in 2012 they were counted around 99 million, even if one child for every seven under 5 years old, still remains underweight. Worrying it is that one in four children in the world under five years old, 162 million, have their growth stunted. In this condition the cognitive and physical condition may be impaired perpetuating a vicious cycle of poverty and under-nutrition. To address this challenge, in 2014 the EU Foreign Affairs Council endorsed an ‘Action Plan on Nutrition’. The plan aims to reduce the number of chronically undernourished under-five-year-olds by at least 7 million by 2025 and to meet the World Health Assembly target of reducing global stunting by 40% (70 million) by the same date. Furthermore, United Nations aims for the Sustainable Development and the post 2015 Agenda is to achieve a decrease of neonatal death to 12 or fewer cases per 1 thousand live births and the death rate of children under five years old to 25 or fewer deaths per 1 thousand. Furthermore the goal is also to fight against child labour, child soldiers, abuses and violence against minors. While they will also work to guarantee legal identity to everyone and to ensure the registration of births.
@IreneGiuntella
Poverty hits young people. Roughly half the population living in a destitution condition is represented by young people of eighteen years old or minors (47%). That’s what is reported in a recent analysis by the European Parliament. Young people who live in social exclusion conditions, victims of abuse and violence, in particular girls and young women. 300 thousand children are estimated to be child soldiers.
