London, December 14
Millions of children across the world have become “invisible” on account of various forms of exploitation they have been suffering for years. An estimated 143 million children in the developing world have suffered the death of at least one parent, while more than one million children are living in detention, the vast majority awaiting trial for minor offences.

About 171 million of the world’s children are working in hazardous conditions and with dangerous machinery, including in factories, mines and agriculture.

These and many more findings form part of Unicef’s groundbreaking report “State of the World’s Children 2006: Excluded and Invisible” which witnessed a global release in London today. The report, which reviews the causes behind children’s abuse and exclusion, was released by Unicef Executive Director Ann M. Veneman who said the report detailed how factors like poor governance and discrimination deprived children of protection and basic services like access to education and healthcare.

This exploitation, she said, manifested in various forms — from armed conflict and child marriages to detention and lack of support systems. The Unicef chief added it was time for governments to focus attention of such outstanding issues to achieve millennium development goals (MDGs) in time. She was particularly worried about the state of children in South Asia, which has the lowest rate of birth registration in the world. Asserting the significance of MDGs, she said they were mainly about children, their hunger and poverty and about how adversity pushed them to the margins where they became invisible to society.

The Unicef has just launched an initiative to find out what happens to the children whose parents are detained.

Where on the one hand the statistics painted a grim picture of the health of world’s children, on the other it was time to clutch on to hope, as embodied by 13-year-old Gudia Khatun from India. Gudia who hails from a village in Bihar (India) took hardships in her stride to emerge a winner.

No wonder she was chosen by Unicef this year to represent excluded and invisible children across the world. Ms Veneman referred to Gudia with great respect as she said, “Here is an example of courage and fortitude in the face of severe odds. Gudia endured the worst forms of exploitation to ensure she went to study in a society that discourages education for the girl child. In India many children are still excluded from basic services, trafficking, denial of opportunity to attend school, among other issues.”

Many of these issues have been extensively addressed in the Unicef report which calls for child-focused budgets and for national laws that check discrimination against children. In the report, Unicef also shows how millions of children disappear from view when trafficked or forced to work in domestic servitude. Other children such as street children live in plain sight but are excluded from fundamentals services and protections, which governments must otherwise afford to them.