Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States
No other region has been through such dramatic changes. Within a few years of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, what were formerly eight countries splintered into 27. More than 400 million people have had to adapt to a transformed political, economic and social landscape. People have new freedoms: the right to vote, to express an opinion, and to choose their own path in life. And economies are growing again, after their near collapse in the 1990s. But millions of families are struggling to make ends meet. And they face new dangers such as HIV/AIDS, soaring drug use and human trafficking. Rising poverty and falls in social spending exclude vast numbers of children from the benefits of economic progress. Time and again, the same groups of children are denied their most basic rights: the poorest, the ethnic minorities, the disabled, the refugees, those with HIV/AIDS and, very often, girls. We aim: To tackle that exclusion Our goal: All rights for all children
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