What’s the best country to be born in today?

Some of these lists tell me where the world’s happiest people live. Some tell me where the best public transport systems are, where the best coffee is, or where I can book the cheapest hotel room. They encourage me to think: where do I want to live, where should I travel and where do I wish I was born?

For me, one of these rankings trumps all others. If I could choose, it would be as simple as this: I’d be born where I would have the best chance to make it to my fifth birthday.

I spent most of my childhood in suburban Melbourne. At my local childcare centre, I learnt English as I spent days climbing over play equipment, scratching my knees on cement, colouring outside the lines and gulping down mugs of frothy chocolate milk.

There was nothing unique or unusual about my childhood. I simply enjoyed the basic rights that every child is entitled to: safety, health, play and education.

But before they take their first breath, the lives of millions of children are shaped forever by their country, community and gender. Through no choice of their own, children are born into circumstances that will leave them struggling to overcome disease, stay healthy and reach five years old.

We’ve made giant leaps in the last twenty five years. Since 1990, the world has halved both the rate and number of child deaths - and that’s something the global community should be proud of. But severe inequities remain between rich and poor countries. A girl born in Chad today is around thirty times less likely to celebrate her fifth birthday than a girl born in Australia.

Every year, UNICEF reports on inequities between children around the world - of which child survival is the most glaring. Skip to the full list or click here for the full State of the World's Children report.
 

Where children have the best chance

Unsurprisingly, some of the places with the lowest under-five mortality rates are amongst the world’s richest countries. In these places, three or less children out of 1,000 die before their fifth birthday:
  These encouraging numbers reflect improved access to the things children need to reach their potential: good nutrition, clean water, safety and health care. But improvements in the child mortality rate don’t paint the full picture: in some countries, overall progress has left behind the poorest and most marginalised children.

Despite significant improvements since 1998, Aboriginal Australian children are still almost twice as likely die before five than non-Indigenous Australians. In 2013, infants born to African American parents were more than twice as likely to lose their lives than those born to white Americans. With investment in their most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, countries can start to close the equity gap and ensure that every child gets a fair share of national progress.
 

Where they face the biggest challenges

In 2015, about 80 percent of children who didn’t reach five years lived in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In these countries, around one in every ten children won’t live to see their fifth birthday:
  For parents like Mariama, access to essential services makes a profound difference in helping their kids through childhood. When Mariama’s daughter Hawa started showing signs of malnutrition, she brought her to a health clinic in Sierra Leone where UNICEF supports the therapeutic feeding Hawa will need to survive and recover.

But Mariama’s other children didn’t have the same chance.

“My third baby died because when his temperature became hot we had no money and were not able to buy medicine. The free healthcare programme had not started. Instead the baby remained in our hands and God took the baby’s life.”