This is Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English DevelopmentReport.

Some new reports about conditions in developing countries offerlittle to celebrate.

Carol Bellamy of UNICEF says half of the more than two thousandmillion children in the world "are growing up hungry and unhealthy."The United Nations Children's Fund says the biggest threats arepoverty, war and HIV/AIDS.

The UNICEF report defines child poverty as the lack of at leastone of seven services needed to survive, grow and develop. These areshelter, food, safe water, health care, clean living conditions,education and information. UNICEF and British researchers found thatat least seven hundred million children lacked two or more of theseservices.

The report also says almost half of all people killed in warsince nineteen ninety have been children. And, in some Africancountries, the spread of AIDS has meant high child death rates andshorter life expectancy.

UNICEF noted progress made under the Convention on the Rights ofthe Child, a nineteen eighty-nine international treaty. But it saysthese gains are threatened in several areas. In fact, it says childpoverty has also risen in some developed countries.

Carol Bellamy, the head of UNICEF, says too many governments aremaking choices that "hurt childhood."

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported that at leastfive million children each year die because of hunger and poornutrition. The F.A.O. says there were eight hundred fifty-twomillion hungry people in the world between two thousand and twothousand two. That number was up eighteen million from five yearsbefore. The F.A.O. says hunger costs developing countries thousandsof millions of dollars a year in lost productivity and nationalearnings.

Low wages were a subject for the International LaborOrganization. This U.N. agency says half of all workers earn lessthan two dollars a day. The percentage is lower than in nineteenninety. Still, the number of people is estimated at a record onethousand four hundred million.

Foreign aid might help with jobs. Yet the group OxfamInternational reported that the aid budgets of wealthy nations arehalf what they were in nineteen sixty.

Next year, Britain will lead both the Group of Eight majorindustrial nations and the European Union. The government haspromised to make the fight against world poverty one of its maingoals.

This VOA Special English Development Report was written by JillMoss. I'm Gwen Outen.