Africa proves tough for children
13m teenage births each year
The number of children who are married, pregnant, labourers, die violently or miss out on school has fallen by almost 30% to 690m since 2000, when nations endorsed global development goals, according to the charity Save the Children.
Singapore, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Slovenia topped the rankings of a report examining health, education, child marriage and child labour practices in 176 countries,
South Sudan, Mali, Chad, Niger and Central African Republic were the countries which scored worst.
Here are some facts on how children fare today compared to 2000:
● About one in four of the 2.3bn children alive today under the age of 18 have been robbed of their childhoods through child marriage, early pregnancy, exclusion from education, sickness and malnutrition.
● Deaths of children under five have halved to 5.4m from 9.8m in 2000.
● Child homicides have fallen by 17% since 2000 to 85,000 murders of young people under the age of 20 in 2016.
● The number of stunted children fell by 49m since 2000 to 149m.
However, numbers have risen in Africa, which accounts for four in 10 children globally who are stunted due to poor nutrition and repeated infection.
● An additional 130m children are now in school, 60% of whom are girls. Some 262m children remain out of school.
● There are 94m fewer child labourers, with eastern Europe and Central Asia making the most noticeable gains.
But one in 10 – or about 152m – children are still working, and nearly half of those live in Africa.
● The number of child brides dropped by nearly 11m to 37m, with South Asia halving its early marriage rates. If all girls finished high school, an extra 51m child marriages could be prevented by 2030.
● There are 13m teenage births each year today, falling by 3m since 2000.
● The number of children living in a warzone more than doubled to 420m since 1995 – about one in five children – with those in countries like Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Iraq and Syria worst affected.