The reality is that 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day. In developing countries families are often forced to choose which of their children get to eat on any particular day. Can you imagine having to make that choice? Eventually older children are often forced out onto the streets to fend for themselves. Without an education and job skills these abandoned children perpetuate the cycle of poverty as they eventually start their own family.
AIDS is ravaging countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and around the world. Parents are dying and leaving their children behind. With no government system to provide help the oldest child, sometimes only 8 or 9, becomes the head of the household. Without the protection of parents these children are often preyed upon by HIV-infected adults with the mistaken belief that having sex with a virgin will cure them. Now the child becomes infected and continues the cycle of abandonment.
In dozens of countries children are being used by resistance armies, militias and terrorist organizations. These children between the ages of 3-17 are either lured off the streets, bought from parents in extreme poverty or kidnapped during attacks by these same armies which kill their parents. Abused physically, psychologically and sometimes sexually, these children are forced into armed conflict, eventually being responsible for many more children being orphaned in these battles.
Faced with poverty, parents are often tempted into selling one or more of their children to traffickers. Some traffickers lure the girls away with promises of jobs and money they can send home. They parents may or may not realize the end intent of the traffickers, but most often these children are beaten, drugged and forced into a life of sexual slavery.
