About Children of Bangladesh:
Bangladesh is home to over 170 million people. More than 64 million children make up around 40 per cent of the population.
With a land mass roughly that of New York State, Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, and borders India and Myanmar
Bangladesh is a densely populated country and populations 170 millions. About half of the populations of Bangladesh are under the age of 18 who are considered as children and more than 20 million of them are under the age of 5. About 73% of children live in the rural areas and 27% live in the urban areas. One-third of these children continue to live below the international poverty line. The violation of child rights is a common matter in Bangladesh.
The children have basic rights to education, balance diet, health and nutrition, protection, participation, recreation, safe water, sanitation, and hygiene.
In Bangladesh about 30% of the people live in extreme poverty and many Families are quite unable to fulfill the basic needs which compel them to engage their children in risky works. About 22% of the children in Bangladesh are illiterate, 30% know how to signature their names, 36% of the children have primary education and only 10% have secondary education. Approximately 80% of students enrolled in grade one complete primary school. High drop-out rates due to poverty and poor quality of teaching and learning are serious problems for primary schools. Only 46% of boys and 53% of girls attend secondary school. About 50% of primary and 80% of secondary level students drop out of school in Bangladesh.
Deprivation of seven human needs such as health, nutrition, education, water, Sanitation, shelter, and information are higher among children living in the income poor families than their counterparts.
Basic Rights of the Children:
Children have basic rights to education, balance diet, health and nutrition, Protection, participation, recreation, safe water, sanitation and hygiene. Unfortunately these rights of children are violated in Bangladesh. The rights of children are violated due to poverty, ignorance, lack of social consciousness and discrimination. The majority of children are deprived of food, shelter, adequate sanitation, information, and education
** Rights of Food
Bangladesh is a developing country in the world. About 26% of its populations still live below the poverty line (less than $1.00 a day or unable to afford to buy food providing a daily intake of 2,100 kilocalories).
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/ World Food Programme
(WFP) study in mid-2008 expressed that natural disasters and rising food prices had increased the number of poor people by 7.5 million, to a total of 65 million and real household income had dropped by 12% and one in four households had become food insecure, with female-headed households hit hardest (FAO and WFP 2008). Later the food price decreases but the children who are excluded from school could not return to school due to irregularities in the school.
** Rights of Nutrition
Well nourished children perform better in school, grow into healthy adults, and can serve the country better than malnourished children. Rural children are more likely to be malnourished than urban children. Undernourished children have lowered resistance to infection and are more likely to die from common childhood diseases, such as diarrhea and acute respiratory infections. In Bangladesh about two-fifth of children under-5 are underweight, and nearly half of them suffer from chronic malnutrition. A conservative estimate of the number of under-5 children suffering from wasting (weight-for-height) in Bangladesh is 2.2 million. More than half a million of these children are in the severe category of acute malnutrition and face elevated risks of mortality. Some children of wealthy families in urban areas of Bangladesh are over weighted because of taking excess fibreless junk food. These children are not actually healthy. In real life obesity is a major disease which creates Type 2 diabetes and cardiac attack. Iodine deficiency disorder (IDD), the world’s leading cause of preventable mental disability and impaired psychomotor development in young children. The vitamin A supplementation programme for children is a success story in Bangladesh. Vitamin A prevents the children from night blindness
** Rights of Health
People lacking access to safe water, hygienic sanitation, and hygiene awareness also lack the good health and social resources needed to pull themselves out of poverty (The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF).