UNICEF decries worsening plight of women, children
From Okumephuna Chukwunwike and Emeka Anuforo, Abuja
A NEW report has shown that more than half the world's children are suffering extreme deprivations from poverty, war and HIV/AIDS.
This is despite that the passage of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, passed 15 years ago has made history as the most single ratified treaty in existence.
"These are conditions that are effectively denying children a childhood and holding back the development of nations", the United nations Children Fund (UNICEF) said in its 10th yearly report on the State of the World's children. It was launched at the weekend by the Minister of Women Affairs, Obong Rita Akpan.
The report said that more than one billion children are denied the healthy and protected upbringing promised by 1989 Convention. It stressed that the failure by governments to live up to the Convention's standards has caused permanent damage to children and in turn blocks progress toward human rights and economic development.
Raising alarm on the havoc being done by the HIV/AIDS pandemic on women and children, the report said that the virus is not only killing parents but also destroying the protective network of adults in children's lives.
It said: "Many of the ailing and dying are teachers, health workers and other adults on whom children rely. And because AIDS prevalence grows in condensed pockets, once adults start dying, the overall impact on surviving children in a community is devastating."
It continued: "The proportion of women living with HIV has risen steadily. Today nearly half of those who are HIV positive are women or girls. The pandemic's 'feminisation' is most apparent in sub-Saharan Africa where close to 60 percent of those who are HIV positive are female".
The report is a yearly publication by the UNICEF which records progress made globally on the improvement of the wellbeing of children and equally highlights agenda
for the coming year. It emphasises the critical areas that need urgent attention in child survival, development and participation campaigns.
This year's report, entitled: "Children Under Threat," examines three of the most widespread and devastating factors threatening childhood today namely: HIV/AIDS, conflict and poverty.
The report declared: "Faced with economic hardship, women and girls become more vulnerable to prostitution and trafficking in which they have little power to negotiate safe sex".
It revealed that girls are likely to succumb to the lure of transactional sex, entering into relationship with older or wealthier men in exchange for money,
goods and other basic services.
This transactional sex, the report said, greatly increases their risk of contracting the HIV virus.
The report also said that more than half of the world's children are suffering extreme deprivations from poverty and lack the simplest basic amenities that are very essential for the welfare of life.
It highlighted that one in six children is severely hungry, one in seven lacks basic health care, one in five has no safe water and one in three has no toilet or sanitation facilities at home.
The report found that 640 million children did not have adequate shelter; 300 million had no access to information such as television, radio or newspapers and 140 million children, the majority of them girls, had never been to school.
Poverty is not confined to developing countries, the report said, as the proportion of children living in low-income households in 11 of 15 industrialised nations rose in the past decade.
More than 10 million child deaths were recorded in 2003, with an estimated 29,158 children under five dying from mostly preventable causes everyday.
UNICEF reported conflict around the world had seriously injured or permanently disabled millions of children, while millions more endured sexual violence, trauma, hunger and disease caused by wars.
Nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed in conflict during the 1990s were children and around 20 million children were forced from their homes and communities by fighting.
UNICEF said almost half a million children under 15 died of AIDS in 2003, while another 630,000 children were infected with HIV.
By 2003, some 2.1 million children under 15 were living with HIV/AIDS, most of them infected during pregnancy, birth or through breast-feeding.
From 2001 to 2003, the number of children who had lost one or both parents to AIDS rose from 11.5 million to 15 million and around 80 percent of those were living in sub-Saharan Africa.
The UNICEF report said that the world had the capacity to reduce poverty, conflict and HIV/AIDS and improve the plight of the world's children.
It said the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to improve the world through human development by 2015 and were agreed to by the UN's 191 member states in 2000, could be achieved at a yearly cost of $40-$70 billion. In comparison, world spending on military in 2003 was $956 billion.
The presentation of the report last Friday coincided with the World Human Rights Day. Speaking on the relevance of the day to the report, the ECOWAS Executive Secretary, Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, who
spoke through a representative, said that children were the most valuable assets that must always be put into consideration.
His words: "We cannot celebrate human rights without taking into account the most important assets, the children. Unfortunately the rights of children are not being respected worldwide especially in Africa and West Africa in particular".
The ECOWAS boss made a passionate call to the governments of the sub-region to take a closer look at the Convention on the Rights of the Child, saying that development begins with the children.
The Minister of Women Affairs had earlier while launching the report given an assurance that her Ministry had put in place measures to implement some of the provisions of the report.
She promised that the material would be made into a child advocacy campaign and would be well circulated to all stakeholders.
"I am optimistic that at the end of the day the report will bring a better living condition for our children", she said.
The launch of the report saw in attendance members of the Nigerian Children Parliament and students from different schools. President Olusegun Obasanjo had in a special media chat with four members of the Children Parliament assured that his administration would do all within its power to see that children's right are always protected.
"You are very important to us and you are the future leaders of this nation. We therefore cannot take your welfare for granted otherwise we will suffer for our negligence tomorrow", he assured them.
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