For preventable causes such as malnutrition and lack of health care, according to a media report, about 56 million children could die by 2030. The reported the newspaper "Saarbrücker news" on Monday, citing an opinion of the Federal Government on a request from the Greens on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Altogether, there are still 150 million children in the world chronically undernourished and 50 million "acutely malnourished".
In order to improve the health conditions for children and mothers, Germany paid a total of 572 million euros in 2017 according to the government, the newspaper wrote. The recipients were therefore bilateral and multilateral organizations. Children's lives worldwide should finally be better protected and put at the center of German foreign policy, the human rights expert of the Greens called Kai Gehring.
According to the government, a "challenge" is also the fate of children in armed conflicts. Children are "particularly vulnerable to violence and systematic violations of international humanitarian law," the statement said. More than two-thirds of all children worldwide experience various forms of violence.
The situation of children using the example of Yemen
The effects of war and violation of international law are exemplified by the situation in Yemen, where a child dies every ten minutes, according to relief organizations, as a result of preventable diseases and malnutrition. "400,000 children are life-threatening malnourished and could die at any minute," Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said, in late 2018. More than 11 million children depend on humanitarian aid in the civil war.
Last September, the UN presented an estimate of how precarious the situation is for children worldwide. Although child mortality is currently lower than ever, millions of children are still not celebrating their fifth birthday: in 2017, 5.4 million children under the age of five worldwide died, according to the UN report.
In addition, there were almost one million deaths among girls and boys between the ages of five and 15 in 2017. In total, 6.3 million children and adolescents under the age of 15 died. "That's an average of one death every five seconds," said the Unicef children's charity. Many deaths would be avoidable with simple means such as medicines, clean water, electricity and vaccines.