Rome, Italy, Jan 16, 2006 / 22:00 pm
The Fides news agency has published a study entitled, “Herod: the slaughter of the innocents continues,” denouncing the nightmare endured by 860 million children in the world.
Carried out with information from international groups and data from Catholic missionaries, the study also reveals that in addition to suffering exploitation and prostitution, children face poverty, AIDS, war or abandonment. “The future is an unknown, the present a nightmare that must awaken the consciences of adults,” the report indicates.
The report also indicates that “211 million children under age 14 are forced to work, of which 120 million do so full time.” Millions “work in risky conditions, with dangerous machinery, in mining, with no light and little oxygen, or handling toxic materials.”
From the mines of the Ivory Coast, South Africa or Colombia to the sugar cane plantations in Brazil, child exploitation is rampant, although it is the worst in Asia. “At the heart of many forms of exploitation is the fact that in the poorest developing countries, more than 50 million children are not even registered when they are born,” the report states.