Children ravaged by war

More than two million Angolan children suffer from emotional and physical deprivation, while almost a million are living at general risk, the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child heard from the government on Monday. Lothar Friedrich Krappmann, the committee expert serving as rapporteur for Angola, noted that after three decades of civil war, over 100,000 Angolan children had been separated from their parents, with a similar number orphaned by the conflict. The committee was formed in 1991 to monitor implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which gives a comprehensive collection of children's rights the force of international law. The 192 countries that are signatory to the Convention are expected to send representatives to make periodic reports to the committee on national efforts to uphold children's rights. The Angolan delegation told the committee that their government was committed to protecting children affected by the years of conflict, which ended in 2002. It had demobilised the majority of child soldiers and raised the minimum recruitment age to 18. On being questioned by Krappmann as to why Angola had an allocation for health and education that was only a fraction of the average amount budgeted by other Southern African countries, the Angolan delegation said the country was not wealthy and had a foreign debt of nearly US $10 billion. Angola has one of the highest levels of infant mortality in the world, with 250 out of every 1,000 dying before the age of five. The delegation said the government had launched several programmes to combat malaria, polio and HIV/AIDS in response to the high infant mortality rate. The government had also launched an "Education for All" plan this year, which aims to build 44,000 new classrooms and increase school attendance by 60 percent by 2015.