Continent needs $1 billion annually for orphans

Africa needs at least US $1 billion every year to combat the alarming increase in the number of orphans, a phenomenon that threatens to destabilise the continent, the UN and the African Union (AU) said on Thursday. "The impact [of orphans] on society is obviously enormous," Bience Gawanas, the AU's commissioner for social affairs, told journalists. "It can destabilise society because these children are vulnerable - and they can be exploited and they can be abused." She added that orphans often ended up as child soldiers or prostitutes. More than one in 10 of Africa's 350 million children are already orphaned, with numbers projected to exceed 50 million in the next five years, the UN and the AU said. The two organisations are demanding that the Group of Eight (G8) wealthy nations put the orphan crisis at the top of their agenda for the summit at Gleneagles in Scotland on 6-7 July. The money would be used for the education and healthcare of orphans in just 16 of the worst affected nations on the world's poorest continent. Gawanas said African governments must do more for the continent's children by living up to their commitment to put children at the heart of their policies. "Often for governments, children are an afterthought," she said from the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa at the launch of a two-day summit marking the Day of the African Child. "We need an enormous increase in resources," she said. "It is for governments to find the resources to take care of orphans and vulnerable children. They have to make sure they have the proper policies in place." An advisor on children and AIDS for the UN Children's Fund, Douglas Webb, said: "We need at least $1 billion a year to try and address this crisis. We estimate that by 2010 there will be 50 million orphans on the continent needing help." In five year's time, at least 25 million of Africa's orphans would have lost their parents to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Webb said 10 percent of all funding for HIV/AIDS programmes in Africa should be directed at orphans. "But what we don't know at the moment is where the money is coming from," Webb said. "This must be very much on the G8 agenda." UNICEF estimates that each child would need at least $300 a year to pay for schooling, food, clothes and healthcare. According to UNICEF, Sub-Sahara Africa is the only region in the world where the number of orphans is increasing, mainly due to HIV/AIDS. In 11 countries, more than 15 percent of children are orphans. UNICEF estimates that there are currently 43 million orphans in Africa, 12.3 million of whom have lost their parents to AIDS.