October 23, 2003	Thursday	Sha’aban 26, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: Over one billion children in the developing countries suffer from severe effects of poverty with more than 90 million children in South Asia alone going hungry everyday.

This was revealed in a Unicef-sponsored report based on the ‘largest, most accurate survey sample of children ever assembled’.

The survey measured the extent of child poverty, in terms not only of income, but of deprivation of basic human rights such as shelter, food, water, health, education and information.

The researchers analyzed surveyed data on nearly 1.2 million children from 46 countries collected mainly during the late 1990s.

Eradication of the worst manifestations of poverty, the report stresses, is not only a moral imperative, but a practical and affordable possibility too.

“No effort to reduce global poverty can succeed without first tackling its impact on children,” it added.

Addressing poverty means ensuring that children have access to safe water, adequate sanitation and environments that are healthy and free of disease.

All girls and boys, it further remarks, must be able to attend and achieve in school, and be protected from injury, with time and space to play, to explore and to learn.

But, too often, poverty “deprives children of these necessary foundations for their future”.

The salient findings of the report are that one child out of every three lives in a dwelling with more than five people per room; nearly 20 per cent of the world’s children do not have safe water sources or have to undergo more than 15-minute walk for water, while over 15 per cent of the children under five in the developing world are severely malnourished.

It also said 134 children between the ages of seven and 18 had never been to school and girls were more likely to go without schooling than boys.

In the Middle East and North Africa, in particular, girls are three times more likely than boys to have never attended school.

The physical, emotional and intellectual impairment that poverty inflicts on children, the Unicef report pointed out, could mean a lifetime of suffering and want, and a legacy of poverty for the next generation.

This cycle constrains the overall economic and social development of a nation because nurturing and caring for children are the cornerstones of human progress.