War, AIDS and poverty 'rob children of their lives'

WAR, poverty and HIV/AIDS cause more than half the world's children to suffer, effectively denying them a childhood, according to a new UN report.

The United Nations Children's Fund's (Unicef) annual study showed more than one billion children are denied the healthy and protected upbringing promised by the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Researchers found one in six children are severely hungry, one in seven has no healthcare at all and nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed in war since 1990 have been children.