On 20 November, which is both Universal Children’s Day and the anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), UNICEF will launch the global #FightUnfair campaign to lead voices speaking out about the most egregious and unfair situations facing children today – and commit to doing something about them.
On this day of commemoration, UNICEF Connect has gathered a group of posts about equity. These posts offer a range of perspectives—from UNICEF staff, from adolescents, from people around the world who believe all children deserve a fair chance at life. A fair chance for children also means a better chance for society at large. It allows the whole of society to profit from their skills, talents and potential and, in turn, boosts social and economic progress.
Below is a list of true and outrageously unfair facts. Global truths that address the situation that children face today, in 2015. Please have a look at them and consider what you can do. Could you do anything to change these situations? Then read the rest of the posts on the page and see what UNICEF is doing, what questions we’re asking, what changes we’re helping to make.
#fightunfair. Fight for equity. Fight for the future.
Current facts about the situation of children on the 26th anniversary of the CRC:
- 11 children under 5 die every minute.
- 1 in 8 people defecate in the open.
- Nearly 700 children a day risk their lives to flee war and violence and seek safety in Europe.
- 30 million children were forced from their homes by war, violence and persecution in 2014
- An estimated 246 million children live in countries and areas affected by armed conflicts
- 1 child dies from violence every 5 minutes
- 130 million children are in primary school but still don’t know basic reading, writing and math
Unfair is… Thousands of unaccompanied children facing winter in Europe with just the clothes on their backs
- The poorest children are 5X more likely to be out of school than the richest children.
- Nearly half of the people living in extreme poverty are children
- More than 700 million women alive today were married as children
- Every year for the next decade, about 175 million children will be affected by natural disasters caused by climate change
- Adolescents: the only age group where AIDS-related deaths are not declining
- 1 in 5 refugees and migrants arriving in Europe are children
- Nearly one in five infants weren’t given the vaccines that could protect them from death, illness or disability.
- Children with disabilities are almost 4x as likely to experience violence as those without disabilities.
Unfair is…Not knowing where your family is going to sleep tonight
- 150 million children under age 15 are trapped in child labour
- This year, 1 million babies will die the day they’re born
- 1 in every 10 girls under 20 has been forced into sex or sexual act
- 3 in 10 adults think that physical punishment is necessary to properly raise or educate a child
- Among young people, females are 1.7x as likely to be illiterate as males PFC 2015
- Children of primary-school age from the poorest households are 5x as likely to be out of school as those from the richest
- Children from the poorest households are 2x as likely to die before their 5th birthday as the richest
- AIDS is the #2 cause of death among adolescents globally
- AIDS is the #1 cause of death among adolescents in Africa.
- In Sub-Saharan Africa, 1 child in 12 dies before age 5
Unfair is children fleeing war at home only to be detained abroad
- 159 million children under 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition
- Armed conflict robs millions of children of their right to education
- In 2013, an estimated 246 million boys and girls were verbally bullied at school
- 663 million people do not have clean water to drink
- 5.5 million children are victims of forced labour and trafficking
- 1 in 10 children now live in conflict-affected areas
Unfair is: tens of thousands of children are involved in conflicts in countries throughout the world.