A recent report issued by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is disturbing in its implications of the condition of the world’s babies.

"Progress of Nations 1999," distributed July 22, describes the lack of progress in many cases as it details the plight of nations and their youth populations.

Primary among the ills of the world’s children is HIV/AIDS. The spread of the disease through Asia is producing what we’ve already witnessed in Central Africa: a frightening rise in its orphan population due to parents dying of AIDS. The report says Asia will see its orphan population triple by the year 2000. This gloomy forecast is witnessed by the fact that the number of children living with an HIV-positive parent is far greater than the number of children already orphaned.

In Cambodia, Malaysia and India, and in the African countries of Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Botswana, the rate of AIDS orphans rose 400 percent from 1994-1997. In other developing countries the numbers were not quite as gloomy, but gloomy they were, nevertheless.

The 38-page report says that half the world’s poor are children, and more babies are being born into poverty now than ever before.

Class as well as where you are born are also factors in a child’s chances for survival. Regrettably, even gender will determine the quality of life for a child.

One child in three born in countries like Niger or Sierra Leone will not make it to five years of age. A child born in a ghetto in a developing country is twice as likely to die before his first birthday than an infant born elsewhere in the same city, the report says.

Finally, and most disturbing, a female child will be worse off than a male child born almost anywhere, according to UNICEF officials.

It seems that developing, or Third World, nations are bearing the brunt of the suffering. The richest one fifth of the world’s population—meaning developed, white industrial countries, for the most part—has 82 times the income of the poorest fifth and consumes 86 percent of the world’s resources.

If that one fifth of the world’s population was suffering the death and disease as the poorest fifth, solutions to the problems would have arrived long ago.