Madrid, Spain (Monday, November 21, 2016, Gaudium Press) – One child out of ten worldwide grows up alone, without any assistance and protection. This is what the international organization SOS Children’s Villages denounced on the occasion of Universal Children’s Day just celebrated.
With the campaign “No child is born to grow up alone”, the organization wants to draw attention to the 220 million children, 10% of the world’s children, who grow up alone and live a situation that is seriously jeopardizing their emotional, physical and mental development and, consequently, their future. A child needs stable and loving assistance of at least one adult, a home that guarantees security and prosperity, adequate food, health care, education and the fulfillment of other basic needs.
Where one of these conditions is lacking, claims the President of SOS Children’s Villages Spain in the note sent to Agenzia Fides, there can be serious consequences for a full growth of the child. According to figures collected by the organization, out of more than 2 billion children around the world, 220 million are deprived of at least one of these conditions, due to extreme poverty, poor parental health, violence, discrimination, marginalization, armed conflict or natural disasters.
SOS Children’s Villages has appealed to governments to put infancy as top priority in their political agendas in order to support and sustain children when the parents are not able to do so, by providing the necessary resources to ensure their right to be children.
Source Agenzia Fides