PHA-Exchange> Investing in children for a better future

[Claudio]

> From: "Dr Rana Jawad Asghar" <jawad at alumni.washington.edu>
>
> > Investing in children for a better future
> > Editorial
> > The Lancet
> > Volume 362, Number 9394 - 01 November 2003
>
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol362/iss9394/full/llan.362.9394.editorial
> _and_review.27657.1
> >
> > "We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women, and chil-
> > dren from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme pov-
> > erty, to which more than a billion of them are currently sub-
> > jected", so the UN Millennium declaration stated more than 3
> > years ago. One of the eight Millennium Development Goals, to
> > halve the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015, would
> > undoubtedly improve health and wellbeing of millions of children,
> > the most vulnerable and dependent members of society.
> >
> > Since then, the aftermath of two wars--in Afghanistan and Iraq--
> > and an unstable political situation in the Middle East have dis-
> > tracted politicians from the global war on poverty and have made
> > even the more optimistic among the international community real-
> > ise that these goals have become increasingly utopian. Some hope
> > was put into efforts to devise fairer global trade rules that
> > could help to diminish poverty in developing countries. But after
> > the dismal failure of negotiations at the fifth World Trade Or-
> > ganisation Ministerial Conference in Cancun in September, previ-
> > ous small steps towards agreement have faltered with no immediate
> > prospect of further progress. And yet, the most effective measure
> > to create a more stable and safe world would be to lift people
> > out of extreme poverty. Pro-poor and pro-children approaches
> > would be the strongest policy responses.
> >
> > In a new report, commissioned by UNICEF and released on Oct 21,
> > Child poverty in the developing world, David Gordon and col-
> > leagues from the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Re-
> > search in Bristol, UK, present detailed survey results on essen-
> > tial human needs, such as food, safe drinking water, sanitation
> > facilities, health, shelter, education, and information. They re-
> > port summary data from about 1·2 billion children in 46 develop-
> > ing countries. A forthcoming book will contain full details of
> > their research. The results make depressing reading.
> >
> > 674 million or 37% of children in developing countries are living
> > in absolute poverty, as defined by severe deprivation in two or
> > more basic human needs. The highest proportion lives in sub-
> > Saharan Africa, where, for example, 167 million children are
> > classified as living with severe water deprivation-- that is,
> > having access only to unsafe water sources or living more than a
> > 15-minute walk from a water source. Worldwide, 134 million chil-
> > dren between 7 and 18 years old have never been to school. Most
> > of these children are girls. More than 500 million have no toilet
> > facilities whatsoever, not even a bucket or an open latrine. 265
> > million children either have not been immunised against any vac-
> > cine-preventable disease or have had a recent illness causing di-
> > arrhoea with no medical treatment or advice. These are shocking
> > data, unprecedented in their depth and scope. It does not take
> > much imagination to understand the impact of such living condi-
> > tions on the health, wellbeing, and future prospects for these
> > children--conditions that are compounded by the effect of
> > HIV/AIDS on family structures.
> >
> > Children's rights have long been neglected even in developed
> > countries, where concerns centre not only on poverty and equity
> > but also on safety. The UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon
> > Brown, is on target to reduce child poverty by a quarter by early
> > 2004 in the UK, albeit from a higher level than seen in many
> > western European countries. But it took the disastrous failings
> > of many professionals and the miserable and lonely death of Vic-
> > toria Climbié to trigger plans for a Children's Commissioner for
> > England to act as an independent champion on behalf of children.
> > Scandinavian countries have had a commissioner since the 1980s.
> >
> > Enough evidence has been provided. What is urgently needed are
> > firm plans and commitments aimed specifically at children in na-
> > tional and international settings. The most important investment
> > into a stable and humane future a society can make is to care for
> > and nurture its children. Children are all too often overlooked
> > and forgotten. As one of the child delegates at the 2002 UN Spe-
> > cial Session for Children said: "You call us the future, but we
> > are also the present."
>
>