2018 Report from ‘Save the Children’: Which Countries are Best and Worst for Children

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, all children have the right to be healthy and safe and to be protected.

According to news website “Quartz,” a new report from “Save the Children,” an independent non-governmental organization based in Britain, shows which countries best adhere to these laws and regulations, and which countries have fallen short in this regard.

The 2018 report “Ending Childhood” has ranked 175 countries based on a series of indicators, including security, health, nutrition, education, child labor, child marriage, child pregnancy, and severe violence.

In 95 countries, the overall conditions for children have improved since the previous year. However, this table shows that in 40 other countries the situation has worsened and warns that “poverty, war, and discrimination against girls have put more than 1.2 billion children—more than half of the world’s children—at risk of premature end of childhood.”

In this list, the ten countries where children have better health and safety are in the following order:

Singapore, Slovenia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Iceland, Italy, and South Korea.

The ten countries with the worst and most dangerous living conditions for children are:

Niger, Mali, Central African Republic, Chad, South Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Congo.

Of the ten best countries for children, eight are in Europe and two are in Asia. These 10 countries are among the 15 wealthiest nations and rank at the top of UNICEF’s best child health rankings.

While the 10 countries most dangerous for children are all located on the African continent, some of which are involved in internal conflicts, strife, and the presence of terrorist groups. War, in addition to poverty and gender discrimination, was one of the important factors in this ranking.

Source: Voice of America