Child protection from violence, exploitation and abuse

Introduction

Protecting children from violence, exploitation and abuse is an integral component of protecting their rights to survival, growth and development. An estimated 300 million children worldwide are subjected to violence, exploitation and abuse including the worst forms of child labor in communities, schools and institutions; during armed conflict; and to harmful practices such as female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage.

Child Protection key data:

Child Trafficking

• The best available estimate is that 1.2 million children are trafficked worldwide every year. Commercial Sexual Exploitation • Despite difficulties in arriving at reliable figures, the last recorded estimates indicate that as many as 1.8 million children, most of them girls, are sexually exploited in the multi-billion-dollar commercial sex trade each year. Children Used by Armed Forces and Groups • At any given time, over 250,000 children are recruited or used in armed conflict. They are used as combatants, messengers, spies, porters and cooks and forced to perform sexual services. • More than 2 million children died as a direct result of armed conflict in the 1990s. More than three times that number have been permanently disabled or seriously injured. More than 1 million children have been orphaned or separated from their families. • An estimated 20 million children worldwide have been forced to flee their homes because of conflict and human rights violations. Children Without Parental Care • 143 million children in the developing world - 1 in every 13 - are orphans. • An estimated 15 million children have lost at least one parent because of AIDS. Children in Conflict with the Law • More than 1 million children are detained worldwide, the vast majority of whom have committed petty crimes or minor offences. Violence against Children • Worldwide, an estimated 40 million children under the age of 15 suffer from violence, abuse and neglect.

Child Labour

• An estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labour. • An estimated 171 million children - of whom 73 million are under 10 years old - are working in hazardous situations or conditions, including work with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture, with dangerous machinery or in mines. • An estimated 8.4 million children work under horrific circumstances: forced into debt bondage or other forms of slavery, prostitution, pornography, armed conflict or other illicit activities. • It is likely that millions of children toil in private homes as domestic servants but the hidden nature of this work makes a reliable figure impossible to obtain.

Birth Registration

• Every year, 55 per cent of all births in the developing world (excluding China) go unregistered: over 50 million children beginning life with no identity. • In South Asia alone, 24 million children are not registered at birth, the region with the highest number of unregistered births. • In sub-Saharan Africa, 18 million births are unregistered.

Harmful Traditional Practices

• An estimated 3 million girls and women are cut each year on the African continent. • In the 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East where female genital mutilation/cutting is performed, some 130 million girls and women are affected.

Child Marriage

• Despite laws against child marriage in many countries, over 80 million girls in the developing world will be married before the age of 18. • In the poorest countries, one in every two girls is made to marry early. • An estimated 48 percent of women aged 15-24 are married before 18 in South Asia, 42 per cent in Africa and 29 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.