Children lose in upheavals

THE children of eastern Europe are among the main losers of the upheaval and revolutionary change of the 1990s, victims of mass poverty and family breakdown and increasingly vulnerable to sexual abuse, according to a detailed survey published yesterday. A 170-page report from UNICEF, the United Nations children's organisation, on the plight of children in the former Soviet Union, central Europe and the Balkans, told of rampant poverty, of rising juvenile crime, murder and suicide, and of the reappearance of tuberculosis and diphtheria. The anti-communist revolutions of 1989 and the disintegration of the soviet system generated great hopes that the needs of children would be better met in the short term," the report said. These hopes have been largely betrayed."