The Director of the Cybercrime Prosecution Department, Manolis Sfakianakis, was honored today by UNICEF with the 2014 UNICEF Award for his contribution to the protection of children's rights in Greece.
The award ceremony took place today, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the UN General Assembly in 1989.
The "Nikos Analytis" Special Award was given to the 33rd Primary School of Volos Special Youth Detention Center, for their project on the theme "We have a dream" - how we dream of the world of children.
On this occasion, UNICEF presented the report "The State of the World's Children - Reimagining the Future: Innovation for Every Child".
Since the adoption of the Convention, there has been tremendous progress and significant improvements in almost all areas of children. Major achievements include:
· Halving the number of children under 5 who die each year, from almost 12 million to 6 million.
· More than halving the number of people living in extreme poverty, from 47% to 18%.
· Increasing global early childhood education enrolment by more than 30%.
· Reducing the number of children aged 5-17 involved in child labour by almost a third.
· Providing access to sanitation to almost 2 billion people.
But although significant progress has been made over the past 25 years, millions of children are deprived of their basic rights:
· There are 58 million primary school-age children who are not in school.
· A quarter of the world's children are stunted due to preventable chronic malnutrition during their early years.
· Nearly 2.5 billion people - or 1 in 3 globally - still lack access to improved sanitation.
The most marginalized children – children born into poor families, minority children, children living in remote areas, and children with disabilities – are the ones who most often lack access to the basic services and protection they need to ensure their rights.
UNICEF's report "The State of the World's Children - Reimagining the Future: Innovation for Every Child" calls on states, development professionals, businesses, activists and communities to work together to advance new ideas to address the most pressing problems facing children and find new ways to scale up the best and most promising local innovations.
Source: newsit.gr
