There are nearly 2.3 billion children around the world — or just under one-third of the global population. They’re our future: future doctors, teachers, leaders, you name it.
But every day, this endless potential dims for millions of children. Challenges due to poverty, hunger, conflict and more keep the youngest people in our world from prosperity and success. Here, we’re exploring six major barriers to children’s rights and wellbeing.
Poverty
Perhaps the root of many of the other challenges we’ll discuss below, poverty around the world has devastating ripple effects on children’s livelihoods everywhere. UNICEF estimates that around 333 million children live in extreme poverty.
Note: The World Bank designates extreme poverty as living on less than $2.15 per day. Other poverty levels include living under $3.65 and $6.85 per day in lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries, respectively.
Children living in poverty often don’t have access to necessities like food, and families struggle to afford other expenses like school fees or medical care. Desperate to stay afloat, children and their families might fall victim to harms like trafficking or child marriage that only compound a dire situation.
The fewer opportunities a child has to grow, finish school, get a good job and achieve financial stability, the more likely they are to get stuck in poverty. Without help, this struggle will persist throughout their life, and unless the cycle of poverty is broken, it will repeat for their children — and likely even their grandchildren.
Plan works with adolescents and marginalized young adults to build peer networks and strengthen both their soft skills and career skills to equip them for the careers they want. From entrepreneurship training to finance 101 to vocational training, we know young people’s potential can only be fulfilled when they have the means to build a future for themselves.
Getting an education and a well-paying job or starting their own business (which you can even help with) are the building blocks of that success, and they are vital for every single child in poverty currently afraid that they’re never going to achieve their dreams.
Conflict
Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen. These are just a few places where conflict has decimated families’ livelihoods and killed thousands of children. It is estimated that some 400 million children are currently living in war zones or places experiencing violent conflict.
For children in conflict who survive, they are often displaced — sometimes without their families beside them — and escape to areas where the need for basics, like food, water and medical care, outweighs available resources. For instance, the outbreak of war in Sudan in 2023 pushed millions of people into South Sudan and Chad, accelerating food insecurity and increasing hunger and malnutrition by the millions.
For girls, managing their periods during conflict is nearly impossible without clean water and menstrual products, as we’ve seen in Gaza.
Help a girl living through crisis by giving her a Hygiene Kit, which has basics like soap and menstrual pads, so she can focus less on survival and more on healing.
Children’s education is also disrupted during conflict, meaning they fall behind on their learning and emotional development (the trauma they experience only makes this worse, too). Even more, without the ability to go to school, coupled with economic instability, children become vulnerable to trafficking and child marriage in high-conflict areas.
Without direct and immediate intervention, children and young people are robbed of their futures, and entire communities are thrust into the cycle of poverty. Plan works directly with those who are most affected by conflict to meet their needs and help them recover for the long term.
Education loss
Current estimates put the number of children missing school at around 250 million, an increase of 6 million since 2021. The UN also reports that globally, only 62% of children complete their final years of secondary education. The COVID-19 pandemic halted school for most students around the world, but other barriers like conflict, natural disasters and laws like the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education have kept millions from exercising their right to an education.
Because education and poverty are inextricably linked, you already know what we’re going to say here: without access to an education, children are more likely to fall into or stay in poverty. Their social-emotional development is also hindered, meaning they can’t form vital relationships that help them grow into well-adjusted adults.
Aside from this, without access to school, girls become especially vulnerable to forced marriage and early pregnancy – which can be life-threatening. But studies, including one by Plan in partnership with Citi’s Global Insights team, have shown that when more girls are educated, individual and community economic conditions improve.
In 2023, Plan reached 10.5 million learners with quality education programs and ensured over 4.3 million girls have better access to education. Supporters like you who gift School Fees for a Girl lessen the financial strain on already struggling parents who can’t afford to pay for their daughter’s secondary education and fuel programs like The Graduation Project, which is keeping girls safe and in school.
[Read more: In her own words: Hope restored in Zimbabwe]
Climate change
Climate change isn’t just about rising temperatures and melting glaciers; it’s about hurricanes, floods, drought and, ironically, deep freezes, among other natural disasters. It’s a complex issue that disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable members of society, including children.
Displacement from climate-related events has pushed at least 43 million children from their homes, and UNICEF predicts this number will grow to more than 113 million children over the next 30 years, mainly due to cyclones, storm surges and flooding.
Like displacement due to conflict (which can also occur alongside climate disasters as the two may coincide), climate refugee children lack access to education, health care and basic means of survival. And since climate change is also leading to massive droughts, hunger and malnutrition are increasing in places like the Horn of Africa and Central America.
Help 1 Family Cope with Climate Change by providing them with training to protect livestock and mitigate climate-related risks on their farms.
Hunger
Since we’ve mentioned the intersection of climate change and hunger, let’s take a moment to focus on hunger a little more.
In 2022, 691 million to 783 million people faced hunger around the world, and it has been on the rise in places like the Caribbean and across all regions of Africa. For children, hunger is fatal. Nearly half of all deaths of children under five are related to undernutrition.
Note: The World Health Organization uses the term “malnutrition” to address 3 categories of conditions: undernutrition (not eating enough), micronutrient-related malnutrition (think vitamin deficiencies) and obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases (like heart disease, diabetes and some cancers).
The physical and psychological effects of hunger on children are significant. Without enough nutritious food, children can’t physically grow, and they face conditions like wasting and stunting. They also don’t have the ability to concentrate on things like school, and a lack of nutrients for the brain impairs its development – further hindering a child’s cognitive and intellectual growth.
Girls facing hunger are also more likely to be out of school, either because their parents can’t afford to pay for school fees or because they become responsible for finding food for their siblings. And when girls are out of school, they’re at risk of premature marriage and pregnancy.
[Read more: This is what hunger does to girls’ education]
By gifting a Food Kit for a Family, you’ll help provide immediate relief for children struggling to eat enough food and reduce the burden on girls to search for food.
Child marriage
Child marriage primarily impacts girls, tearing them away from school and ending their childhood prematurely. Nearly 634 million young women today were married before the age of 18. In sub-Saharan Africa, where child marriage is the most prevalent, almost one in three girls under 18 are married before adulthood.
Often thought of as a way out of poverty, child marriage actually keeps girls trapped in the cycle. Since many girls drop out of school either because of or prior to marriage, they can’t get jobs to support themselves and must rely on their husbands for survival, a power imbalance that often leads to abuse and violence.
Child marriage also leads to early pregnancy in girls. But because their bodies are not fully developed, the risks of disease, injury and death during and after pregnancy skyrocket. Pregnancy-related conditions are the second leading cause of death in girls ages 15-19, only eclipsed by tuberculosis.
Without knowledge about the risks of child marriage, girls and young women don’t know how to identify abuse and protect themselves — or even resist a marriage. Parents are also often in the dark about the negative effects on their daughters, so creating spaces for intergenerational dialogue in communities is a vital step in ending the practice entirely.
