AS we continue to celebrate Child Month and the journey of looking out for the needs of our nation’s children, we must be aware of how many children worldwide are affected by conditions that contravene the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child.

Today, we look at some facts about how many of the children worldwide are living in severe poverty.

1. Almost nine million children around the world died before they reached their fifth birthday during 2008. Approximately a third of all of those deaths were attributed to hunger and malnutrition.

2. 134 million children between the ages of seven and 18 have never been to school.

3. In the last decade, more than two million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict.

4. More than 30 million children in the world are not immunised against treatable or preventable diseases.

5. Ninety-five per cent of all the people who get polio are under the age of five.

6. Two million children are believed to be exploited through the commercial sex trade.

7. Girls are more likely to go without schooling than boys — in the Middle East and North Africa, girls are three times more likely than boys to be denied education.

8. HIV/AIDS has created more than 14 million orphans — 92 per cent of them live in Africa.

9. Approximately 246 million children worldwide are used for child labour.

10. 171 million children work in hazardous conditions on a daily basis.