New Delhi: More than half of the world's children suffer from extreme deprivation such as lack of adequate shelter, sanitation, safe water and health-care facilities, a new UNICEF report said today (Dec 9, 2004).

"The situation is effectively denying children a childhood and holding back the development of nations," the report 'Childhood Under Threat' by the UNICEF said.

The report categorises deprivation on the basis of access to shelter, sanitation, safe water, health-care services, schooling, food and information.

It says that though there have been significant advances since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, in several regions and countries some of these gains appear in danger of reversal due to poverty, armed conflict and HIV/AIDS.

"Rights of over one billion children are violated because they are severely underserved of at least one or more of the basic goods and services required to survive, grow and develop," it says.

Although the problem of HIV/AIDS is most acute in Africa, HIV prevalence rates are also rising in other parts of the world, the report says.