‘An end to terrorism and Big B for birthday party’

NEW DELHI: Actor Amitabh Bachchan is more popular as a birthday party guest than Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sachin Tendulkar among children aged 9-18 years, found a Unicef survey of 1,000 children in India as part of a 14 countries survey released on World Children’s Day on November 20.

Barack Obama, Cristiano Ronaldo, Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift top the list of celebs on the must-have birthday lists in other countries.

Terrorism topped the list of problems that children wanted their world leaders to take action on, followed by poverty and poor education, said the report released in New Delhi by Tendulkar.

“India has done fairly well and has reduced child mortality substantially, but there are still areas that need to be worked upon. Girls... are being neglected and you need better quality of education,” said Justin Forsyth, deputy executive director, Unicef.

Violence against children, access to healthcare and poor education are the biggest concerns for children in India, with 51% aged between 9 and 12 admitted worrying a lot about violence affecting children globally, and 43% worrying about being personally affected by violence.

Children in India felt more empowered than the rest, with 52% believing their voices are heard and opinions can affect the nation’s future, as against 50% in other countries feeling disenfranchised.

The results also showed that 91% of Indian children believe the world would be a better place if world leaders listened to children’s voices.

Bullying is also a major concern with 60% admitted to being worried about it.

The overall objective was to establish a baseline of their awareness of and engagement with world issues and use the input to generate awareness among countries.