Daily Threats - World's Children

Hard times — hard lives

Daily threats

Life is not only difficult for Indian children from poor families, but it is cruel and unpredictable as well. A mother dies every seven minutes in India, often leaving behind many children. Across the country 46 percent of children under age three (about 45 million) are underweight or malnourished. One in three malnourished children in the world live in India. Two and a half million children die in India each year accounting for one in every five child deaths in the world. Out of every 100 children born in India, 87 have a probability of dying before they reach five years of age.

The very existence of girl children is under threat. Sons are favored over daughters and the use of sonograms followed by abortion as a method of gender selection among the middle class tops a half million every year. Among the poor who cannot afford abortion, an even larger number of female infants are quietly suffocated following birth, especially when they are the second or third daughter born into a family. This preference for boys over girls is creating a disparity in the sexes. Across India for every 1000 boys age 0 to six years there are only 927 girls due to the preference for sons. In one state, Punjab, the ratio is 776 girls to every 1000 boys.

Many female infants are left at the gates of orphanages which are disproportionately filled with girls. Of those girls who do survive and remain with their families, 45 percent are married to a stranger before they reach 18 years old. In some Indian states the marriage rate for underage girls is over 60 percent. Many teenage girls are either kidnapped off the streets and trafficked to brothels or sold to brothels by their own families. The Indian government estimates there are 1,200,000 child prostitutes in India.

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