Children are the future yet also most vulnerable to exploitation and deprivation. NGOs such as the International Children’s Trust are working to change this. Since the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child more kids are healthier, can read and free to live as children than imagined possible twenty years ago. But there is no time for complacency.

In China children revel as their country dances in the spotlight of the Olympics. But despite soaring economic growth and wealth in the East, many are left behind.  In Sri Lanka, war and poverty claim many children. In rural Mongolia, the youth forfeit schooling to look after family cattle. These photographs are a reminder that human progress can only be made if children’s rights are realised.