IRIN Web Special: Day of the African Child - Caring for a Young Future

On a continent known so well for its humanitarian disasters and war, African children are all too often the invisible sufferers. While images of starving or abandoned children is a well-used media tool to draw attention to a crisis in Africa, little is known about what sort of life that child had been living before disaster struck.

Did she go to school? Had she seen a doctor? Who is taking care of her?

This IRIN WebSpecial draws together some of the most important issues that shape the day in the life of an African child. "The place for children is in schools, is with their families and with their communities, not in the battlefields," the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu recently insisted.

In West Africa, IRIN looks at how successful school feeding programmes have been in increasing enrolment, and the need for poverty reduction programmes so that parents can afford to educate their children. In a Kenyan camp for Sudanese refugees, a UN inter-agency mission shows particular concern for girls' access to education, where domestic work is a significant barrier. "There is so much work at home it disturbs school", explains Rebecca Nyachod, a refugee from Bentiu, southern Sudan. For her, life at the camp means fetching water, making tea and food, and collecting firewood - and doing homework if she gets a chance. In Angola, war has robbed millions of children of their youth and their future, according to UNICEF. The problem of getting children to school begins early - many die before they have the chance to step inside a classroom. Angolan government statistics say the mortality rate for children under five years old is higher than most other developing countries - at almost 30 percent.

While many children may fail to benefit properly from rudimentary and under-funded institutions provided by struggling governments in Africa, some fall dangerously outside vital cultural and traditional structures, too. In Somalia, IRIN looks at the plight of the unwanted - babies abandoned outside the gates of Hargeysa orphanage, who, without any known clan identity, face a future without property, credit, marriage or social identity. Until very recently, children from orphanages were trained as soldiers and cadres, say social workers - "They were not expected to have a civilian life." Displacement, war and segregation have also cut vital cultural links for the Sudanese "lost boys" who ended up in Kenyan refugee camps. Refugee International noticed that - among other traumas - the young Dinka and Nuer refugees who had refused to undergo traditional scarification of their foreheads were stigmatised by their communities as unruly outcasts, making them more vulnerable to rebel conscription. Hope for these children now lies in a resettlement programme in the United States.