Children are the future and hope of the world. The Bible refers to children as a blessing, a reward, a gift. Jesus loved, honored and valued children. But, this generation is being oppressed like no other previous generation.
- Children make up the largest and most disadvantaged segment of all humanity.
- 1 out of 3 people alive today are under the age of 15.
- 80% of the World’s 1.5 billion children are growing up in Non-Christian homes.
- Every 26 seconds a child is sold into prostitution.
- The United Nations estimates that 1 million children enter prostitution yearly.
- hailand has 2.8 million prostitutes with 1 million being children
- As many as 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys will be sexually abused at some point in their childhood.
- Over 400,000,000 abandoned children live on their own on the streets of hundreds of cities around the world.
UNICEF defines an abandoned child as one who:
- Does not know where his or her next meal is coming from.
- Does not know where he or she is spending the night.
- He or she does not live with either the mother or the father.
While defining a problem is helpful, no definition illustrates the plight of abandoned children as clearly as the following set of statistics:
- Every 2 seconds, a child becomes an orphan.
- Every 14 seconds, a child is orphaned by AIDS.
- 1,000,000,000 of the world's families live on less than a dollar a day.
- Authorities estimate that child pornography is a $20 billion a year industry; too many abandoned children end up as victims of this deviant activity.
- UNICEF estimates that nearly 1,000,000 children enter the sex trade every year.
- Experts also estimate that nearly 10,000,000 children are working as prostitutes, with nearly 90% of them girls.
- According to the World Health Organization, malnutrition is the single biggest contributor to child mortality rates worldwide.
- Many street children use a number of inhalants (glue, gasoline, lighter fluid) and illegal drugs (marijuana, cocaine and heroin).
- Street children are routinely detained illegally, beaten and tortured and sometimes killed by police in some countries.
