The State of the World's Children 2011: Adolescence an Age of Opportunity

Today, 1.2 billion adolescents stand at the challenging crossroads between childhood and the adult world. Nine out of ten of these young people live in the developing world and face especially profound challenges, from obtaining an education to simply staying alive – challenges that are even more magnified for girls and young women.

In the global effort to save children’s lives, we hear too little about adolescence. Given the magnitude of the threats to children under the age of five, it makes sense to focus investment there – and that attention has produced stunning success. In the last 20 years, the number of children under five dying every day from preventable causes has been cut by one third, from 34,000 in 1990 to around 22,000 in 2009.

This report catalogues, in heart-wrenching detail, the array of dangers adolescents face: the injuries that kill 400,000 of them each year; early pregnancy and childbirth, a primary cause of death for teenage girls; the pressures that keep 70 million adolescents out of school; exploitation, violent conflict and the worst kind of abuse at the hands of adults.