Today, November 20, is Universal Children’s Day, a day recognized by the United Nation’s to develop worldwide understanding and camaraderie between children and to promote the welfare of children across the globe in accordance with the UN Charter. November 20th is the day the UN General Assembly adopted both the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).
This year the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon established Education First, a global initiative on education, which aims to put every child in school, improve the quality of education, and foster global citizenship.
Meanwhile, a recent report by UNICEF, Generation 2025 and beyond: The critical importance of understanding demographic trends for children of the 21st century, examines the increase and impact of global births across the next century.
The study predicts a “four percent increase in the global population of children by 2025.” The study also forecasts “by 2050 one in every three births will be African, compared to only one in ten in 1950.” Other predictions concerning global births include:
- 455 million of the two billion global births from 2010 – 2025 will be in the 49 UN-designated Least Developed Countries (LDCs)
- 859 million births between 2010 – 2025 will be in the middle-income countries (China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria)
- Nigeria will have the highest increase in the under-18 population of any country, adding 31 million children between 2010 and 2025.
- Nigeria will also have one in every eight deaths among under-18s across the globe