PHA-Exchange> : Real world of youth

[Claudio]

From: "Vern Weitzel" <vern at coombs.anu.edu.au>

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1152569410338&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Editorial: Real world of youth

Young people generally don't get much sympathy. But today is World 
Population Day and this year's
theme is "Being Young is Tough."

Many would say "welcome to the real world kids," but the United Nations 
Population Fund feels that,
for one day at least, young people should be the focus of our attention.

Consider some facts:
# Nearly half of the world's people are under the age of 25 and, not 
counting children, a quarter of
them — an estimated 238 million — are surviving on less than $1 a day.

# 82 million girls in developing countries who are now between 10 and 17 
will be married before their
18th birthday. They work hard to contribute to the economy but their 
prospects for economic security
are limited by their lack of education, child marriage and child bearing.

# Every day, 14,000 more people are infected with HIV/AIDS, half of them 
under 25. Young women are
especially vulnerable because reproductive health services are rudimentary 
in developing countries.

World Population Day was started in 1987 to focus attention on the day 
humankind hit 5 billion. Now,
the teeming masses are well over 6 billion with projections there will be 
almost 9 billion people on
the planet by the year 2050.

The biggest problem for today's youth may be figuring out how the world is 
going to sustain that
many people in the future — and where they are going to live.