The total population in the three countries of the Indo-China Peninsula is 62.5 million (1980 estimate) out of which children under the age of 15 comprises 43.9%. Over 80% of the total population belong to rural areas. Available statistics indicate that problems such as high infant and child mortality, high incidence of communicable diseases, malnutrition, low enrollment rate for education, poor quality of education, inadequacy of child care services and poor environmental health conditions, are prevalent in these countries. UNICEF's programmes are geared towards the reduction of these problems and thus cover the following fields: (a) child health; (b) child nutrition, (c) water supply and sanitation, (d) formal and non-formal education, (e) social welfare services for children. The extent to which UNICEF could provide in terms of technical, material and financial assistance is rather small compared to the size of the problem and thus significant efforts will have to be made by the Governments as well as by the U.N. community and voluntary agencies to overcome these problems.