Issues and how World Vision responds
These pages give you a brief insight into the main poverty issues and problems children and their families face throughout the region and what activities World Vision has implemented to address the issues.
Click on the following subcategories for more details.
Nearly 18 million children live in poverty in the  former Soviet Union States and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) 11 years after the shift from communist to market-led economies. These children live in households surviving on less than $2.15 per person, per day. Real incomes have fallen over the last decade, increasing the number of children living in poverty. Just under 60 million children and young people in the region live on less than US$ 4.30 a day.
Poverty within many of the Middle East and Central Asia countries is the most  important underlying factor affecting societies' ability to meet the basic needs and rights of children. Poverty compromises the families' ability to pay for schooling, and provide a safe and nurturing care environment. The desperation caused by poverty erodes traditional value systems and often necessitates survival strategies that place children at risk. The effects of poverty can cause lifelong damage to children's minds and bodies, making it more likely that they pass on poverty to their own children, thus perpetuating the poverty cycle.
Child mortality rates have fallen in many countries. However, millions of children continue to suffer from poverty, ill health and marginalisation.
A very important factor impacting the health of the child is the fact that the region also has the lowest level of iodized salt consumption in the world, exposing millions of children to easily preventable iodine deficiency, the main cause of preventable mental retardation. The number of people currently unprotected stands at more than 350 million - putting more than one-fifth of the global number at risk.
Increasing numbers of children are languishing in institutions as families struggle to cope. In most societies within the region, children with special needs and disabilities are seen as outcasts and few have access to professional care and treatment.
A 2001 report by UNICEF ("A Decade of Transition") says that 1.5 million children were in public care  at the end of the 1990s, or 150,000 more than at the start of the decade. Around 1 million of these children are living in institutions. The vast majority are "social orphans" - children whose parents are still alive but are unwilling or unable to provide care because of poverty, illness, imprisonment or harmful and dysfunctional parenting. The number of children in public care is a reflection of the greater risks faced by children and families due to weaker family ties, lower incomes, reduced access to health care and education and higher rates of adult mortality.
The population of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS - an organisation uniting all former Soviet republics minus the 3 Baltic States) and the CEE is more than 400 million, 108 million of them young people.
For some countries within the Middle East and Central Asia, over 50% of the population is under the  age of 15. In the West Bank and Gaza the child population is still growing, while the ability of the usually large families to meet children's basic needs and to invest in their development is decreasing. Apart from that, the creation of new jobs to sustain a rapidly growing working age population, has ceased as people focus on survival.
Last but not least, political instability, past and present conflicts and violence greatly increase the vulnerability of children and threaten  children directly by increasing their exposure to violence, and also indirectly by exarcerbating other circumstances that place children at risk, including poverty, school exclusion and family breakdown.
Of grave concern, many children and their families are on the move throughout the region. Internally displaced children in e.g. Azerbaijan and Georgia  and refugee kids in Lebanon and Armenia live in terrible circumstances and lack the basics like adequate nutrition, healthcare, clean water, education and a safe environment in which to grow up and live as children. Recent or present conflicts have caused widespread trauma and huge psychosocial problems, which need timely, professional assistance.
|
