- Make children the cornerstone of urban decision-making, urges Unicef, By Mark Tran, February 28, 2012, The Guardian: “Unicef has urged governments to put children at the heart of urban planning – and to improve services for all – since the majority of the world’s children will grow up in towns or cities rather than in rural areas. In its report, The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World, the UN agency said hundreds of millions of children who live in urban slums are being excluded from vital services, from clean water to education…”
- Split between rich and poor greater in cities, UNICEF reports, By Leslie Scrivener, February 28, 2012, Toronto Star: “Five-year-old Kiara appears well cared for – nicely dressed, well-fed and loved. Her hair shines. But she has worked with her family since she was three, selling trinkets in the subway trains of Buenos Aires. There have been mishaps: she has fallen onto the train tracks while playing, and last year she broke her arm in a train door. Almost half the world’s children live in cities. Their families are lured from their rural homes, hoping to find jobs for themselves and education for their children. It doesn’t always work out that way. ‘It’s heartbreaking for parents,’ says David Morley, president and CEO of UNICEF Canada. ‘They don’t want their children working on the street. They wish they had enough.’ In its annual report, released on Tuesday, UNICEF explores the struggles faced by families raising their offspring in the world’s slums, where one in three city-dwellers now live…”
- World’s slum children in desperate need, UNICEF says, By Robyn Dixon, February 28, 2012, Los Angeles Times: “You see them, night and day, in nearly every African city. They are ragged children dodging between the cars: beggars, shoeshine boys, teenage prostitutes, petty traders and porters carrying loads on their heads with thin, pinched faces and anxious eyes. They tap on car windows, begging, and wait by the highway desperate to sell their goods. Around half the people in the world live in cities and towns, a billion of them children, as the urban population spirals. Millions of children live in slums and shantytowns and they’re dying of the same illnesses that kill the rural poor, according to UNICEF: hunger, diarrhea and disease caused by poor sanitation and overcrowding…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty