A/HRC/22/61 often more prevalent than for their higher-income or rural counterparts. 83 There are some indications that for some socioeconomic groups, such as adolescents and women, poverty may be linked to HIV prevalence, owing to higher rates of early sexual initiation and reports of forced or traded sex.84 40. The effects of urban poverty on women are often compounded by the fact that, in many contexts, women already face social and political marginalization. For instance, while insecurity of land tenure and inadequate shelter is a challenge for both men and women living in urban poverty, women are particularly disadvantaged because they are often denied rights to property owing to cultural norms and discriminatory legal mechanisms. 85 B. Children and youth 41. Slum settlements are hazardous environments that expose children to elements that may affect their health. For instance, poor urban children often suffer a disproportionately high incidence of diarrhoeal and respiratory disease than children living in rural or higherincome urban areas, and studies indicate startlingly higher – sometimes up to three times higher – child mortality rates in slums than in other parts of the same city. 86 Poor urban communities also often lack facilities or safe recreational spaces for children. 87 In addition, inequalities between poor and higher income urban areas affect children from the outset. Limited access to quality education can entrench generational poverty by hampering children‟s ability to acquire skills and to secure higher-paying jobs as adults.88 42. Urban unaccompanied minors, such as orphans, runaways or “street children”, are affected even more acutely. Many of these children are pushed into the streets by the household‟s need for more income, while others leave homes to escape abuse or in the hope of finding better income opportunities. 89 Life on the street leaves them without a social safety net, rendering them particularly susceptible to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of police, exploitation by organized begging or waste-picking rackets, and exposed to harsh conditions without access to reliable shelter. 90 43. Youths are also nearly three times as likely as adults to be unemployed. The recent financial crises led to a 4 million increase in the number of unemployed youth since 2007. In 2011, 74.8 million youths were unemployed, and an additional 6.4 million young people have given up hope of finding a job and have dropped out of the labour market altogether.91 Youth also represent 23.5 per cent of the total working poor, compared with just 18.6 per 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 14 See Montgomery, “Urban Poverty”; Kelly Hallman, “Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Unsafe Sexual Behaviors Among Young Women and Men in South Africa”, Policy Research Division Working Papers, No. 190 (New York, Population Council, 2004). Ibid. UN-Habitat, “Case Study: Women-Headed Households Suffer Disproportionately from Inadequate Housing” (2008). Sarah Fry, Bill Cousins and Ken Olivola, “Health of Children Living in Urban Slums in Asia and the Near East: Review of Existing Literature and Data”, prepared for the Asia and Near East Bureau of USAID under EHP Project 26568/OTHER.ANE.STARTUP, 2002. UNICEF, “Poverty and exclusion”, p. 13. DFID, “Ending Child Poverty: the Challenge”. See UNICEF, “Poverty and exclusion”. Ibid. See also Jo Becker, Easy Targets: Violence against Children Worldwide (HRW, 2001); and “Off the Backs of Children”: Forced Begging and Other Abuses against Talibés in Senegal (HRW, 2010). International Labour Organization (ILO), Global Employment Trends: Preventing a deeper jobs crisis (Geneva, 2012), p. 84.