The World Children's Report 2012, which has just been presented in Mexico, analyzes the situation of children in cities. Your title is "Girls and boys in an urban world" and evidence that, although we often associate childhood poverty, especially with rural areas in developing countries, cities do not escape the miseries of millions of children.
According to this report, more than one billion children live in urban areas around the world and an increasing number of them do not have access to services such as drinking water, education or health.
Poverty and exclusion often occur in urban areas: about a third of the world's urban population lives in slums, a proportion that is more than 60% in Africa. The document does not have a promising future, as it is expected that close to 1.4 billion people will live in irregular settlements and slums in 2020.
The urbanization process is leaving hundreds of millions of children without access to essential services in cities and towns. In addition, families living in poverty often pay more for lower quality services.
Water, for example, can cost 50 times more in poor neighborhoods, where residents have to buy from private providers because the pipeline does not arrive. This causes that one billion children have difficulty accessing drinking water in cities.
For all these data, the president of Unicef Spain, Consuelo Crespo, has assured that it is necessary to "take measures" to prevent the "alarming" growth of the urban population from becoming an "element of inequality, exclusion and vulnerability for children ".
In short, while cities allow many children to enjoy advantages such as access to schools, clinics and play areas, in those same urban environments some of the largest inequalities in areas such as health, education and access to opportunities for children.
Identifying these inequalities in cities and putting government efforts to dissipate them is a fundamental objective in favor of children in the world.
