Who are the most vulnerable children?

More than 1 billion children live in poverty worldwide. While they are all vulnerable to the risk of malnutrition, disease, and neglect, millions face further marginalization and exclusion—these are the most vulnerable children. The most vulnerable children are living in extremely difficult circumstances due to a lack of protection and exposure to negative environmental impacts, leading to potential long-lasting consequences on their overall development, health, and well-being. Life is a daily struggle for survival. The most vulnerable children include street children, child laborers, child victims of sexual exploitation (including those trafficked in the sex trade), orphans, and child soldiers and others affected by conflict.

Child soldiers are recruited and even abducted by rebel and government troops alike, often drugged and forced to be frontline combatants, cooks, porters, spies, and human mine detectors. Girl soldiers are further brutalized as sex slaves. Trafficking is the use of fraud, force, or coercion to exploit a person for profit. Children are abducted to fight as child soldiers, to serve as bonded laborers, or to be sex slaves in brothels. Because of the hidden nature of trafficking, the number of victims is unknown (estimates vary from 12 to more than 30 million), but 50 percent of the victims are children. Child labor includes work that places children in exploitative conditions that are harmful to their physical and mental well-being. In addition, child laborers are often denied the opportunity of an education because they are working during school hours or do not have the funds for school fees.

Fast facts:

• Worldwide, there are 145 million orphans under age 18. (UNICEF)

• There are up to 150 million street children in the world. (UNESCO)

• At least 1.2 million children are trafficked annually for child labor. (ILO)

• There are 218 million child laborers ages 5 to 17 worldwide, one in seven children of this age group. (ILO)

• There are more than 250,000 child soldiers around the world. (UNICEF)

• In the last decade, more than 2 million children have died in armed conflict, and 10 million have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. (UNICEF)

• There are currently eight known governments worldwide that actively use children in their armed forces, and multiple rebel groups that recruit or forcefully abduct children and youth to fight.

• Approximately 1.8 million children are exploited in the global sex trade. (UNICEF)

Institute for the Handicapped and Backward People response:

Institute for the Handicapped and Backward People's projects strive to meet the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs of the most vulnerable children, focusing on activities that prevent them from falling into deeper crisis; protect children who are already vulnerable through care, protection, and provision of immediate needs; and restore children by helping them gain skills they may have lost and reintegrating them with family and community when possible and appropriate.