Save the Children Notes Chasm Between Balkan Countries

A new Save the Children International report on Wednesday, called "Stolen Childhoods", shows huge gaps in the standards of children's lives between the richest and poorest countries in the Balkans.

The End of Childhood Index focuses on a set of lifechanging events that signal the disruption of childhood and ranks 172 countries based on where childhood is most intact and where it is most eroded.

The criteria by which countries are ranked are child mortality rates, percentage of malnourished children, and the percentage of children out of school, who have started working, married, had a child of their own, or who ended up as victims of extreme violence.

The report shows a wide gap between the best and worst ranked Balkan countries. Croatia comes top in the region, high up in 25th place, while Albania much further down, in 71st place. The rest come in-between.

Save the Children reports that as many as 23 per cent of children up to five years old are stunted as a result of malnourishment in Albania, referring to the most recent data during the period 2005 to 2010. Albania also has the worst child mortality rate in the Balkans, 14 out of a thousand children under the age of five, according to the report.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is ranked in 35th place, since 4.6 per cent of its children have been forcibly displaced by conflict, according to the report.

Serbia comes in 41st place as the rreport estimates that 3.3 percent of children there are displaced by conflict. However, this number includes Kosovo, which was not monitored independently in the list of 172 monitored countries.

Montenegro ranked in 44th place and Bulgaria, where 36.8 in a thousand girls aged 15 to 19 have had a child, is in 49th place.

Romania also has a...