The Asia Pacific practices for implementing child friendly cities

In the fast-urbanising majority world countries of the Asia-Pacific region, many governments struggle to provide basic infrastructure for services such as safe water. Children face serious danger from pollutants and pathogens in the air, water, soil or food, and especially for the region's millions of street children and children living in slums and in poverty, traffic accidents and issues of abuse are far too commonplace. In the region's higher-income countries, however, the problem is a very different one: a culture of anxiety, depression and stress is becoming increasingly evident with many children being diagnosed with anxiety related disorders and learning difficulties (Malone 2007).