War, poverty and HIV/Aids are causing more than half the world's children to suffer and effectively denying them a childhood, according to a UNICEF report published today.
The UNICEF annual study The State of the World's Children,said more than one billion children are being denied the healthy and protected upbringing promised by 1989's Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Researchers found one in six (90 million) children is severely hungry, one in seven (270 million) has no healthcare at all, and the report says nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed in war since 1990 have been children.
The report warns that government failure to live up to the standards of the convention causes youngsters permanent damage - and will hold back nations' development.
Publishing the report at the London School of Economics today, UNICEF's executive director, Ms Carol Bellamy, said: "Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood.
"Poverty doesn't come from nowhere; war doesn't emerge from nothing; Aids doesn't spread by choice of its own. These are our choices."
The report says 400 million children have no safe water, with 500 million existing without a toilet or sanitation facilities. It also found 640 million do not have adequate shelter; 300 million lack access to information, such as TV, radio or newspapers, and that 140 million children, mostly girls, have never been to school.
Additional reporting Reuters