The world has to focus more on the plight of its most disadvantaged children to save them from death due to preventable causes and free them from abject property, UNICEF has said in its State of the World’s Children report released on Monday. It has also noted that while child mortality rates have dropped and education levels have improved, progress is patchy.
The report, made public worldwide on June 28, was released at the Raj Bhavan here on Monday by Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao. The UNICEF report makes it clear that the world’s poorest children are staring at a bleak future if governments, donors, businesses and international organisations do not accelerate efforts to address their needs.
On a positive note, the report says significant progress has been made in saving children’s lives, getting them into school and lifting people out of poverty. Also, global under-five mortality rates have been more than halved since 1990, boys and girls attend primary school in equal numbers in 129 countries, and the number of people living in extreme poverty is almost half of what it was in the 1990s.
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“But this progress has been neither even nor fair,” the report says, and points out that though education plays a unique role in levelling the playing field for children, the number of children who do not attend school has increased since 2011 and a significant proportion of those who do go to school are not learning. Globally, about 124 million children do not go to primary and lower-secondary school, and almost two in five children who do finish primary school have not learned how to read, write or do simple arithmetic.
On an average, each additional year of education a child receives increases his or her adult earnings by about 10 per cent, and for each additional year of schooling completed by young adults in a country, that country’s poverty rates fall by nine per cent.
Chief secretary Swadheen S Kshatriya, who was present at the release, said, “We have already initiated various steps to address the healthcare, nutrition, education and protection needs of both mothers and children. He added the government is keen to adopt the Comprehensive Maternal Infant Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN) policy.
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The report points to evidence that investing in the most vulnerable children can yield immediate and long-term benefits. Globally, cash transfers, for example, have been shown to help children stay in school longer and advance to higher levels of education, it notes.
Better data on the most vulnerable children, integrated solutions to the challenges children face, innovative ways to address old problems, more equitable investment and increased involvement by communities — all these measures can help level the playing field for children, the report notes.
On a positive note, the report says significant progress has been made in saving children’s lives