Most Nepalis live on less than £2 per day.

Global recession, disease, political instability and natural disasters like earthquakes mean growing numbers of homeless children live on the streets in misery and squalor. Nepal provides no compulsory schooling. Child labour is widespread.

Up to 5,000 young girls are abducted every year and forced into prostitution in India and the Middle East. Nepal’s cultural practices may trigger a child’s plight. Unfortunately, it is not that unusual for a divorced or widowed mother to abandon her children in order to remarry, or for the new husband to reject them and use them as household slaves or even throw them out.

It is children with such backgrounds who have found their way to the orphanages funded by Child Action Nepal.

* Under-16's make up 40% of the population and number 9.2 million

* Almost 40% of under-16's don’t go to school.
* 2.6 million children work to survive, often in miserable conditions.

Out of 100 children:

- 86 live in rural areas, 14 in the towns
- 42 live in absolute poverty
- 56 suffer from malnutrition
- 51 finish primary school
- 3 die from diarrhoea
- 51 are girls, though only 61 percent enrol at primary school compared with 79 per cent of boys