The 2018 End of Childhood report, released by a non-governmental organization called Save the Children on Thursday, May 31 has clearly shown that Singapore is the best country in the world to raise children. This time to find the accurate result, not only the UN numbers but also the national estimates were being included in the report.
A total of 175 countries were judged on the basis of under-five mortality rate, out-of-school children and youth, child stunting, child labour, child marriage, population displaced by conflict, adolescent birth rate and child homicide rate, to collect the data of those countries where children are missing out on childhood.
However, the recent report clearly stated that along with reigning champion Slovenia, the south-east Asian country Singapore also bagged 987 scores out of possible 1000 to become the best country with 'Few children missing out on childhood,' which means "although relatively few children in these countries are missing out on childhood, the absolute number of children missing out likely totals in the millions. This is especially true in more populous countries at the bottom of the performance band."
Apart from the those two countries other top ten countries are, Norway (Score 985), Sweden (Score 985), Finland (Score 984), Ireland (Score 981), Netherlands (Score 981), Iceland (Score 980), Italy (Score 980) and Republic of Korea (Score 980).
Save The Children's Asia regional director Hassan Noor Saadi stated that Singapore is a great place to raise children with good access to high-quality education and medical care services and it is also considered as one of the safest countries in the world. In addition, he said that unlike other countries, where people can see child marriage, poor access to education and war, in Singapore such issues either do not exist or these are in extremely low levels.
Among other Asian countries, Japan ranked 19th and China grabbed 40th place. On the other hand, there are several countries, who failed to secure the future of their young generation as well as achieved low ranking in the 2018 report.
In that report, there are countries which are marked with alphabets 'C', 'P' and 'G', which means 'Country is characterized by conflict/fragility,' 'Country is characterized by poverty' and 'Country is characterized by discrimination against girls'. While India, who managed to gain 113th position, has received both 'P' and 'G' marking, other Asian countries such as Maldives, Indonesia and Tajikistan have received 'G' for the discrimination against girls.
The report stated that almost 1.2 billion children are living in those countries, which are affected by widespread poverty, conflict and discrimination against girls. They are also excluded from learning, basic food requirement and even health care.
In a statement, Save The Children asked governments from all the countries to ensure that the children of respective countries should be protected from the childhood marriage, early pregnancy, forced labour and malnutrition. Sending a child to school should be one of the top priorities of any country.
