Belarus is home to 1,824 thousand children under the age of 18, the National Statistical Committee informed BelTA.
Belarus is home to 1,824 thousand children under the age of 18, the National Statistical Committee informed BelTA.
In 2015, the child population increased by 34 thousand. As of the beginning of the current year, 44% of boys and girls were under 7 years old, 40.9% were aged 7-14, and 15.1% were aged 15-17. The majority of children (78.3%) live in cities and urban-type settlements.
The republic maintains a positive trend in birth rate growth. Last year, 119 thousand children were born (494 more than in 2014). Annually, more boys are born than girls. For instance, last year 58 thousand girls and 61 thousand boys were born.
In recent years, more than half of births have been associated with women giving birth to their second, third, or subsequent children. Last year, the proportion of second-born children was 40.4% of the total births, and third or more children accounted for 16.8%. In the past year, 1,316 twins and 21 sets of triplets were born in the republic.
The majority of children (86.2%) in 2015 were born to women in registered marriages.
Issues concerning child protection, particularly the problems of social orphanhood, receive significant attention from the state and society as a whole in Belarus. As of the beginning of the current year, 24.4 thousand children recognised as being in a socially dangerous situation were registered in the republic.
Systematic work is being carried out in the country to implement the right to life and upbringing within a family for children deprived of parental care. As of the beginning of 2016, out of 21.2 thousand orphans, 17 thousand were being raised in families, and 4 thousand orphans were in children's residential institutions. The variety of family placement forms (adoption, guardianship, foster families, family-type children's homes) significantly expands opportunities to realise a child's right to live in a family environment. As of the beginning of 2016, 10.7 thousand children were under adoption, with approximately 7 thousand of them in Belarusian families. In 2015, 569 boys and girls found new parents, including 40 children who were adopted abroad.