The last year has been the most brutal for the world’s children in recent memory, with a quarter of a billion of them living in places touched by armed conflict, UNICEF said in a report on Monday. The onslaught has been so great that many of the protracted crises are no longer capturing global attention, informs NBC News.
“Children have been killed while studying in the classroom and while sleeping in their beds; they have been orphaned, kidnapped, tortured, recruited, raped and even sold as slaves. Never in recent memory have so many children been subjected to such unspeakable brutality,” UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said.
Some of the data highlights:
- Up to 10,000 kids have been recruited by armed groups in the Central African Republic, and 432 have been killed;
- 54,000 children in Gaza were left homeless by this summer’s fighting;
- There have been more than 35 attacks on Syrian schools;
- The Ukrainian crisis had displaced 128,000 children;
- Thousands of children in West Africa have lost one or both parents;
- 5 million children have been unable to attend school.
Source: nbcnews.com
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