Every recognized country of the world, except the United States and the collapsed state of Somalia, has ratified the Convention, making it the single most widely ratified treaty in existence. It undermines the U.S.'s credibility as a nation that cares about children. Children make up over half of the world's refugees. They are also subject to hazardous labor exploitation, physical abuse, denial of education, sexual violence and exploitation, cross-border attacks and recruitment as child soldiers. Street children throughout the world are subjected to routine harassment and physical abuse by police, government and private security forces, who seek to clean the streets of a perceived social blight.
Street children face extortion, theft, severe beatings, mutilation, sexual abuse and even death.
Six countries, including the United States, are known to have executed juvenile offenders during the past decade. In some cases, such children are deprived of adequate food and basic medical care, an adequate education, and subjected to appalling levels of cruelty and sometimes deadly neglect. Nearly half work full-time and have little or no access to education. Child laborers may be chained to carpet looms, work in the field sixteen hours a day, or be hidden away as domestic servants, earning little and often physically abused. Prostituted children can be raped, beaten, sodomized, emotionally abused, tortured, and even killed by pimps.