Severe child poverty affects 200k in Catalonia, says Save the Children

More than 200,000 children live in poverty in Catalonia. This, according to Save the Children, which presented a report on Monday stating that one in four people under 18 is affected by child poverty in the country. One of the officials at the NGO, Emilie Rivas, said that in the past few years there has been a “regression” of public investment in child poverty. That is why the paper presented on Monday aims to be some guidelines on how to tackle the issue for the new Catalan government, still yet to be formed. According to the NGO, one in two victims of sexual assault are under 18. 

Save the Children states that 348,600 children in the country live under the poverty threshold, which is at an income of 1,760 euros per month for two-parent, two-children family. Around 204,000 of them are in a situation of severe poverty, which the NGO links to the investment in this field in Catalonia. According to the report, the investment in social protection in the country is only the 0.8% of the country’s GDP, far from the European average, at 2.4%.

Additionally, Save the Children also claims that there are no specific resources to deal with children who are victims of sexual assault, which make up half of the total amount of those affected by such attacks. Indeed, during the 2016-2017 school year, around 30% of secondary school students (12 to 18 years old) suffered some kind of sexual aggression, but only 4% of the episodes were reported to the police.