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OVERVIEW

The Media and Children’s Rights

Millennium Development Goals
MDG 1 : Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality
MDG 5: Improve maternal health
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
MDG 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

NEW: MDG4 and The State of the World’s Children 2008

The Media and Children’s Rights

Commissioned by UNICEF and based on the practical experience of working journalists, The Media and Children’s Rights resource is an attempt to assist media professionals and others to consider how the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child might impact upon the way children are represented in and by the media.

Millennium Development Goals

In 2000, the world leaders gathered at the Millennium Summit in New York and agreed on eight Millennium Development Goals. All of these goals impact upon children

Unicef

Keeping children safe from violence and abuse is central to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and fulfilling the aims of the Millennium Declaration.

The UN Secretary General’s study on violence against children is a joint initiative, directly supported by the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR), the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

All of the millennium development goals affect children, the following targets under each of the goals were identified as having the greatest potential impact.

MDG 1 : Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Target 2: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Malnutrition is an underlying factor in more than half the deaths of children under five. Malnutrition in children often begins at birth, when poorly nourished mothers give birth to underweight babies. Malnourished children develop more slowly, enter school later, and perform less well. The proportion of severely underweight children is falling, but less than two fifths of the 77 countries with adequate data to monitor trends are on track to reach the Millennium Development Goal target.

Progress in reducing child malnutrition has been fastest in East Asia and Pacific, and South Asia. But many countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, lag far behind clearly illustrated in the following graph..

(Source: World Bank ).

Prevalence of Child Malnutrition

The ratio of underweight children in the world presents an important poverty indicator.


MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education.

Unicef

The 1990 Conference on Education for All pledged to achieve universal primary education by 2000. But in 2001, over 100 million school-age children were still not in school, 57 percent of them girls and 96 percent were in developing countries – mostly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The Millennium Development Goals set a deadline of 2015 when all children everywhere should be able to complete a full course of primary schooling (Source: The World Bank Group).

Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. For more information go to World Bank graphs for each region

MDG 4: Reduce child mortality.

NEW: MDG4 and The State of the World’s Children 2008

In 2005, 10.6 million children under five were dying each year. Six causes accounted for 73 percent of these deaths: pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles, neonatal pneumonia, preterm delivery and asphyxia at birth. (Source: World Health Organisation).

In developing countries, one child in 12 dies before its fifth birthday, compared with 1 in 152 in high-income countries. Child deaths have dropped rapidly in the past 25 years, but progress everywhere slowed in the 1990s, and a few countries have experienced increases in the same period. At current rates of progress, only a few countries are likely to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality to one-third of their 1990 levels (Source: The World Bank Group).

Under-five mortality since 1990

MAP: Interactive map from the MDG Monitor 


Target 5: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.
In 2003 the average under-five mortality rate was 123 deaths per 1,000 in low-income countries, 39 in lower-middle-income countries, and 22 in upper-middle-income countries. In high-income countries, the rate was less than 7. For more information go to World Bank graphs for each region.

Infant mortality

Infant Mortality in Africa 2000 Infant mortality (under-one mortality) represents another important poverty indicator. The situation in Africa shows quite high ratios in sub-saharan and middle Africa, with lower rates in the very North and South of the continent.

Infant mortality in the beginning of the 1990s

Source:	World Development Report, UNDP, New York; World Development Indicators, World Bank, Washington DC
Year published:	1995

MDG 5: Improve maternal health.

Worldwide, more than 50 million women suffer from poor reproductive health and serious pregnancy-related illness and disability. And every year more than 500,000 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Most of the deaths occur in Asia, but the risk of dying is highest in Africa.

Women in high-fertility countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have a 1-in-16 lifetime risk of dying from maternal causes, compared with women in low-fertility countries in Europe, who have a 1-in-2,000 risk, and in North America, who have a 1-in-3,500 risk of dying. High maternal mortality rates in many countries are the result of inadequate reproductive health care for women and inadequately spaced births. (Source: The World Bank Group).

Target 6 : Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio. See World Bank graphs on maternal mortality for each region.


MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

HIV/AIDS

• As of December 2005, 40.3 million people living with HIV, of which 2.3 million are children.
• 4.9 million people newly infected with HIV in 2005, of which 700,000 are children under 15 years of age.
• There were 3.1 million AIDS related deaths in 2005, of which 570,000 were children under 15 years of age.
• Every 14 seconds, another parent dies of AIDS, leaving behind an orphaned child.(Source: UNAIDS)

Target 7: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS

In 2004, 2 million children were living with HIV/AIDS. For social and physiological reasons, women and girls are more vulnerable to HIV infection than are men and boys. Women make up slightly less than half of adults living with HIV/AIDS, but where the epidemic is spreading, prevalence rates are rising fastest among young women. In parts of Sub-Saharan Africa young women are more than three times as likely as young men to be infected. (Source: World Bank ).

Sources of information:

A Call to Action: Children the missing face of AIDS - AIDS is threatening children as never before. Millions of them are missing their childhood, medicines, education, information and a host of other essentials due to the disease.

A Generation at Risk: The Global Impact of HIV/AIDS on Orphans and Vulnerable Children, features a chapter on "Human Rights of Children affected by HIV/AIDS

Children on the Brink 2004: A joint report of new orphan estimates (UNICEF, UNAIDS, USAID)


Malaria

“At present malaria remains the infectious disease that takes more lives of children in Africa than any other—three times as many as HIV infection….. If we are going to dramatically reduce child deaths in the next decade, we need to put more focus on combating malaria.” Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF.

Target 8: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Malaria is endemic in large parts of the developing world, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions. The World Health Organization estimates that 300-500 million cases occur each year, leading to more than one million deaths. Almost 90 percent of all cases occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, where children are the most affected and malaria may account for as much as 25 percent of child mortality.

(Source: World Bank ).

MDG 7 : Ensure Environmental Sustainability

Children are exposed to serious health risks from environmental hazards. Over 40% of the global burden of disease attributed to environmental factors falls on children below five years of age, who account for only about 10% of the world’s population.

Each year, at least three million children under the age of five die due to environment-related diseases. Acute respiratory infections annually kill an estimated two million children under the age of five. As much as 60 percent of acute respiratory infections worldwide are related to environmental conditions. Diarrhoeal diseases claim the lives of nearly two million children every year. Eighty to 90 percent of these diarrhoea cases are related to environmental conditions, in particular, contaminated water and inadequate sanitation. Nearly one million children under the age of five died of malaria in 1998. Up to 90 percent of malaria cases are attributed to environmental factors. (Source: WHO).

Water:

Target 10: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water

Lack of clean water and basic sanitation is the main reason diseases transmitted by feces are so common in developing countries. In 1990 diarrhea led to 3 million deaths, 85 percent of them among children. See World Bank graphs for data on population without access to clean water and sanitation.

Impact on Children of Water Shortages A Report by Save the Children UK assesses the severe and long-term impact of drought on children’s safety, protection and education.

Urban Slums:
Target 11: Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

Slums are the stage to the most acute scenarios of urban poverty, physical and environmental deprivation. Approximately one-third of the urban population globally live in these conditions. Slum conditions result in placing residents at a higher risk of disease, mortality and misfortune. 94% of the world’s slum dwellers live in developing regions, which are the regions experiencing the most rapid growth in urban populations and with the least capacity to accommodate this growth. Where available, trend data indicate that this problem is worsening. UN-HABITAT estimates that in 2001there were 924 million slum dwellers in the world and that without significant intervention to improve access to water, sanitation, secure tenure and adequate housing this number could grow to 1.5 billion by 2020.

Urban Features: Children, Slums’ First Casualties

State of the World’s Cities 2006/7 In many Sub-Saharan African cities, children living in slums are more likely to die from water-borne and respiratory illnesses than rural children.

Sources of Information:
Millennium Development Goals: Progress Report (September 2005)

UN Millennium Development Goal Indicators Database provides detailed sources of information on the 8 goals, 18 targets and 48 indicators which are used to measure progress towards the Millennium Development goals.

Statistics Annex of World Health Report 2005 provides useful statistics on health indicators such as under five mortality rates, annual number of deaths by cause for children under five as well as data on levels of health expenditure for developing countries.

Immunization Summary 2006 -jointly produced by UNICEF and the WHO, it presents detailed statistics on the performance of national and local immunization systems for 193 countries and territories, using data through 2004.

World Health Report 2005 - WHO

Child Health - WHO

Human Development Report 2003 - UN

The State of the World’s Children 2006 - UNICEF

2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic -UNAIDS

World Malaria Report 2005 – Roll Back Malaria partners

HIV/AIDS - UNICEF

Meeting the MDG Drinking Water and Sanitation Target- UNICEF and WHO

The criminalization of the child victims - OHCHR

World Bank Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation - World Bank