Asmara contests UNICEF report on Eritrean children

NAIROBI, Dec 19 (AFP) — Asmara has taken issue with a UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) report on the plight of Eritrean children, stressing its efforts to reduce child prostitution.

The Eritrean government has “drastically decreased the problem of child prostitution,” information minister Ali Abdu said in a statement released late on Saturday.

Unicef’s representative in Eritrea, Christian Balslev-Olesen, unveiled a report last Tuesday citing “a rise in commercially sexually exploited children” in the Horn of Africa country, which Abdu dismissed as “completely untrue”.

The Eritrean government “is fully committed to the promotion and protection of the rights and welfare of its children,” the statement said.

Citing a 1999 survey by the human welfare ministry, Abdu said 76 percent of the 4 579 prostitutes counted were “non-Eritreans”.

Abdu also disputed the Unicef report’s figure of 200 000 orphans, which amounts to nearly 10% of the population under 14, a rate Balslev-Olesen said was the highest in Africa.

“The correct figure of orphans in Eritrea stands at no more than 100 000,” Abdu said.

Balslev-Olesen also said that Eritrea’s “child and maternal malnutrition … is the highest in Africa”.