Childhood implies a distinct period of life in
which children can grow in health and safety. Childhood
refers not only to an irreplaceable time of individual
human growth, but to the quality of those years. The
world embraced standards for childhood in 1989 when every
nation signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Yet childhood today is under threat for more than
1 billion children. Poverty, conflict, and
HIV/AIDS are among the most serious threats undercutting
childhood across the globe. Individually and in concert,
these threats are undermining the survival, well-being
and future prospects of children – effectively denying
them their childhood.
The loss of childhood has vast implications. The
harm caused by each of these threats lasts well beyond
childhood, often recurring in the next generation. Not
one of the Millennium Development Goals will be attained
if childhood continues under the current levels of attack.
Children bear the brunt of poverty. The
well-being and development of more than half the children
in developing countries are undermined because they are
deprived of at least one or more of the basic goods and
services that would allow them to survive, develop and
Poverty is not exclusive to developing countries. In
11 of 15 developed countries for which comparable data
are available, there have been notable increases in child
poverty rates during the last decade.
Armed conflict deprives children of their most
basic protection. Conflict displaces millions
of children from their homes, communities and families,
forces children to become soldiers and to endure sexual
and other violence, hunger, disease and trauma. Children
account for nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed
in conflicts since 1990.
HIV/AIDS is posing a growing and lethal assault
on children and childhood. In several worst-hit
countries, child death rates have risen dramatically
due to AIDS. Millions of children have lost one or both
parents to AIDS and millions more are suffering the effects
of living with sick and dying parents and caregivers.
AIDS, now the single largest killer of people ages 15-49
in the developing world, is fast overwhelming the coping
capacities of families and communities.