Bangladesh's child population (under 18), comprising 45% of the total population are virtually unnoticed. They are vast untapped wealth that could be turned into effective manpower. Born mostly of poor parents, the male children supplement the meager income of the parents, while most female children in urban areas work as domestic help.

Child Worker

WASHINGTON: India, Bangladesh and the Philippines lead theworld in the number of products made by child workers, a US government stock-taking of the global scale of underaged labour revealed Monday.

Hungry Child

India has among the highest numbers of hungry children in the world-nearly double that of sub-Saharan Africa. Even Ethiopia is placed ahead of India (94th) in the Global Hunger Index 2007 of 118 countries by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The index looks at the progress by countries on three indicators for two UN millennium goal targets for 2015: the proportion of calorie-deficient people, child malnutrition and child mortality. Most of these children belong to poor families of marginalized sections of society like dalits and SC/STs.Most are agricultural labourers, donot own any land, have no regular livelihood and little access to food and health programmes.