UNICEF report highlights risks to children in early years

In releasing the report, Reinhard Schlagintweit, the chairman of UNICEF Germany, said that 11 million children die before their fifth birthday, or about 30,000 a day. "The first three years are decisive for the health and survival of children," said Schlagintweit.

UNICEF attempts to protect the rights of children now extended to calls for Third World debt relief as well as emphasising the risks to young children of the threat of AIDS and war along with female circumcision. The risks of death and psychological damage were also high for children whose mothers worked as prostitutes or were the subject of abuse.

UNICEF officials are urging more government investment programmes to help with the development of children around the world. "The death rate for children under the age of six and whose mothers have been abused in one way or another is six times as high as the rate for normal children," Schlagintweit told a press conference unveiling the report in Berlin.

UNICEF's regional director for East and South Africa, Urban Jonsson, estimated that it would cost between 15 and 20 billion dollars a year to help improve the educational, health and social standing of children in Africa. Jonsson was scathing in his comments on the financial demands placed on many Third World nations by international organisations such as the Washington-based International Monetary Fund.

He said it was "immoral" that many nations paid Washington in hard currency what they needed to spend on health care and education. But while the UNICEF officials acknowledged the enormous amount of money involved they insisted it was relatively small compared to other health programmes, such as tackling obesity in the United States.

"Every dollar invested in a child could result in a seven dollar win," said Schlagintweit pointing to the benefits of lower health costs as well as helping to improve a child's work and educational chances. Jonsson said the problems facing children was "both a human rights and human development issue".

AIDS in particular has become an enormous risk to children with 600,000 HIV-positive babies born each year. According to UNICEF, while Africa had 10 per cent of the world's population, 80 per cent of those infected with the disease lived in Africa, which also had 90 per cent of the world's so-called AIDS orphans.

But UNICEF believes that it has been successful in opening up a range of areas that underscore the plight of children in different parts of the world, such as the use of child soldiers. This also included, Jonsson said, UNICEF having managed to open up a dialogue in recent years with South Asian nations over the exploitation of children, including prostitution and gender discrimination.

While more than a decade ago nations making up what was once the Soviet empire in Central and Eastern Europe maintained institutions that were helpful to children's welfare, Jonsson said that since communism had collapsed this was not necessarily the case in the region. Consequently, UNICEF had been active in attempting to improve those institutions involved in caring for children.

(la/dpa)