War, violence, and the spread of disease made 2014 one of the worst years on record for children around the world, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a report earlier this week.
According to the report, nearly 230 million youngsters live in countries where armed conflicts are currently underway, including the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine. Of this group, 15 million are entrenched in violent conflicts in those regions.
“Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds,” Anthony Lake, the executive director of UNICEF, told the New York Times. “They have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves.”
The UN agency also shed light on the effects of the ongoing Ebola outbreak among children living in West Africa, where more than 6,000 people have died thus far. According to the report, nearly five million children didn’t attend school amid fears about Ebola and efforts to contain its spread. Reports by social workers on the ground count more than 5,000 children orphaned since the virus first surfaced in February.
War and weak health care infrastructure also served as common theme in the chaos of 2014. In the Central African Republic for example, more than 430 children have been wounded and killed as a result of the armed conflict in that country. Additionally, 10,000 youngsters have been recruited into armed groups. In all, 2.3 million children have been affected by the violence unfolding in that region.
Such is the case in South Sudan, where an internal conflict that turned violent last year brought forth homelessness, hunger, and death with more than 760,000 children being displaced, 320,000 of whom are refugees in neighboring countries. More than 200,000 children under the age of five suffer from “acute malnutrition.” Even relatively shorter conflicts — such as the 50-day battle between Palestinians and Israelis in Gaza — resulted in more than 500 deaths among children. More than 3,700 youngsters have been wounded and 54,000 lost their homes.
The UNICEF report said that these figures, as harrowing as they may sound, should be no surprise since children have been living in violent, unstable environments for years. “Protracted crises in countries like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen continue to claim even more young lives and futures,” the report said.
An earlier UNICEF report found that nearly 17,000 children worldwide succumb from preventable causes every day, yielding an annual total of 6 million deaths among the group. Young survivors of war and conflict often fare worse, left to their own devices while they struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental ailments. Authors of that report said that newer vaccines and the presence of skilled healthcare workers could halve the mortality rates in some affected countries, especially in conflict zones where the stress of daily life could increase the likelihood of death.
“The physical, sexual and emotional violence to which children are exposed shatters their world. War undermines the very foundations of children’s lives, destroying their homes, splintering their communities and breaking down their trust in adults,” Graca Machel, the former wife of Nelson Mandela, wrote in a 1996 United Nations report that brought attention to the welfare of children in conflict zones.