Fact sheet

• More than 1 billion children suffer from a lack of proper nutrition, safe drinking water, decent sanitation facilities, health-care services, shelter, education and information.
• Of those orphaned by AIDS, 12.1 million, or more than 80 per cent, are in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Every day, nearly 1,800 children under 15 are infected with HIV. Children under 15 make up 13 per cent of new global HIV infections and 17 per cent of HIV/AIDS deaths every year.
• About 30 per cent of rural children in developing countries are out of school, compared with 18 per cent of those living in urban areas, and over 80 per cent of all children who are not in primary school live in rural areas.
• More than 900 million people live in slums; most lack access to safe drinking water, improved sanitation facilities, sufficient living space and decent housing.
• In 2004, an estimated 10.5 million children died before they reached age five, most from preventable diseases. Vaccine-preventable diseases cause more than 2 million deaths every year.
• There are some 300 million indigenous peoples in more than 70 countries, around half of whom live in Asia. Many of them face extreme exclusion.
• There are an estimated 150 million children with disabilities in the world, most of whom face discrimination in one form or another.
• An estimated 48 million children in 2003 – 36 per cent of total births that year – were not formally registered.
• At the end of 2004, roughly 48 per cent of all refugees worldwide were children. During the same year, roughly 25 million people were displaced within their own countries by conflict or human rights violations.
• At the end of 2003, there were an estimated 143 million orphans under the age of 18 living in 93 developing countries.
• The exact number of street children is impossible to count, but estimates are that tens of millions exist across the world.
• More than 1 million children are living in detention (jail) as a result of being in conflict with the law, according to estimates.
• UNICEF estimates that in 2005, 48 per cent of South Asian females aged 15 to 24 will marry before age 18.
• The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that 246 million children between 5 and 17 are engaged in child labour. Of these, nearly 70 per cent are working in hazardous conditions – in mines, with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or with dangerous machinery. Some 73 million of them are less than 10 years old.
• Reliable global statistics are impossible to compile, but it is estimated that trafficking affects about 1.2 million children each year.