At least 700 million children live in disadvantaged communities, the charity Save the Children has said. Disease and malnutrition as well as bombs and bullets keep kids from enjoying happy childhoods.
Image: DW/I. Jabeen
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Most of the 700 million children - about 25 percent of all children worldwide - live in communities "where they have been bypassed by progress in health, education and technology that has improved the lives of many of their peers," Save the Children said in a report released ahead of the International Day for the Protection of Children on Thursday.
The hardest-hit children live in West and Central Africa, which accounts for seven of the 10 bottom-ranked countries - according to the charity's first "End of Childhood" index, ranking 172 nations. Norway, Slovenia and Finland topped the ranking. Germany placed 10th.
"Many of these children suffer from a toxic mix of poverty and discrimination, and experience several childhood enders," Save the Children International's Chief Executive Helle Thorning-Schmidt told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Many also suffer because of discrimination, with girls, child refugees and those from ethnic or religious minorities among the most vulnerable, the charity said.
Save the Children urges more
The report urges countries to tackle discriminatory policies and practices, boost data and invest in public services. It said this is needed if the UN Global Development Goals set in 2015 are to be met.
"We need data on particularly vulnerable segments of the population," said Soumya Chattopadhyay, a senior research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) think tank in London.
Sexual violence and human trafficking would have been included in the Save the Children index as factors that can end a childhood early - if the right data had been available, Save the Children said.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which committed to end extreme poverty and inequality by 2030, pledged to reach first those who are most in need, and to leave no one behind.
"We have no chance of achieving the SDGs unless the basic right to childhood is protected," Thorning-Schmidt said.
In Central African Republic, Mali and Nigeria - countries beset by militant violence and mass displacement - more than one in 10 children die before their fifth birthday, compared with one in 500 in a country such as Finland, according to World Bank data.
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"Yet these deaths are more often caused by disease, malnutrition and poor health care than by bombs or bullets," the report notes.
"Temporary solutions aren't good enough anymore ... we need to realise people could be in crisis situations for years rather than months and work towards making them much more resilient," said UN children's agency (UNICEF) spokesman Patrick Rose.
Bangladesh child laborers: Victims of poverty, apathy and neglect
In Bangladesh around 4.5 million children are working under hazardous conditions. Some 1.7 million of them live and work in the capital, Dhaka. DW correspondent Mustafiz Mamun has captured their every day lives on film.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Children in a balloon factory
Extreme poverty causes families to send their children to work, often in hazardous and low-wage jobs, such as brick-chipping, construction, waste-picking or even in a balloon factory. This balloon factory in Dhaka’s Kamrangi Char suburb employs many young people such as this 10 year-old child.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Lack of inspection
Children - like those here in this factory in Kamrangi Char - often have to work near dangerous chemicals. The Government of Bangladesh has issued a guideline, which bans children from working in 38 different dangerous jobs, but the guideline has not been implemented anywhere as yet.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Most of the workers are children
Children are paid less than adults in Bangladesh and many of them work up to twelve hours a day. That is the reason why most of the workers in these factories are children. They are generally employed in rooms well inside the factory to hide them from sight. They do not get any holidays except for time off on a Friday afternoon. Friday is a day of worship in Bangladesh.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Hazardous working environment
This is Ali Hossain, a child laborer. He works in a silver factory in Keraniganj in Dhaka, almost day and night. The long hours and deafening noise are ruining his health and thus his future. Needless to say, full-time work also contributes to high school drop-out rates.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Children in the tannery factories
According to the 2006 Labor Law, the minimum legal working age in Bangladesh is 14. But here is 12 year old Asif from Noakhali, an admistrative district in Bangladesh. He works at least 12 hours a day drying chemically treated leather in a tannery factory in Dhaka’s Hazaribag. In this way he earns enough money to keep himself and his mother.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Rabbi with his mother
Rabbi is from Chandpur. He works with his mother in this plastic processing factory in Kamrangi Char which produces bottles. The owner of the factory is said to be against employing child labor. Rabbi only got the job, because his mother pleaded with the owner saying that she did not earn enough to support them.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Child helpers in 'human hauler'
Some 93 percent of child laborers work in the informal sector – in small factories, in home-based businesses and domestic employment and on the streets, like these human haulers on the streets of Dhaka. The kids help passengers onto vans and buses used for public transportation. And not surprisingly are often the victims of accidents.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Children from the brick field
Brick-chipping is common in Bangladesh. Many children work as chippers in these brick fields in Amin Bazar in Dhaka. They are paid 100-120 taka for carrying a thousand bricks. These bricks are very heavy, around three kilograms. But each child has to carry six to 16 bricks at a time and take them to the brick depot.
Image: Mustafiz Mamun
Physical and mental health in danger
This is Rahim. Long hours, low or no wages, poor food, isolation and hazardous working conditions, like in this lead factory, can severely affect the physical and mental health of children like Rahim. More so as child laborers are also vulnerable to other abuses such as racial discrimination, mistreatment and sexual abuse.
