According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there are presently 2.2 billion human beings in the world under the age of 18, 300 million of whom do not exist in any sort of official capacity.
In many cases they were born into severe poverty and their births were not recorded, or they were displaced and orphaned by wars, natural disasters or economic upheaval.
On the special two-hour program "Chikyu no Ienakiko . . . Wasurerata San-oku-nin no Kodomotachi (Family-less Children of the World . . . The Forgotten 300 Million) (Nihon TV, Thursday, 7 p.m.), four television personalities each visit a community of abandoned or orphaned children in different regions of the world.