Norway and Slovenia are listed as the best countries for children to reside, said the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) on Thursday, quoting a report by the International Charity Save the Children. The report, which includes a global index ranking the places where childhood is most and least, threatened.

Norway and Slovenia top the list of 172 countries, and are followed by Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden in the End of Childhood index. The index took into account, children’s diet, access to education, child mortality, child weddings, child labour, adolescent pregnancy and regional conflicts. The index revealed that childhood in West and Central Africa were most threatened, with Niger being ranked the lowest, followed by Angola, Mali, Central African Republic, and Somalia.

Meanwhile, according to the charity organisation’s “the Stolen Childhood report’’, one in every four children, or at least 700 million children around the world, were robbed of their childhood. This according to the index is either because of child homicide, poor health, child labour, armed conflicts, violence, early marriage and pregnancy, malnutrition, or exclusion from education system.

The charity calls on countries to act against discriminatory policies and traditions and invest in public services to attain the goals of global development for children set down by the UN in 2015.

NAN