Who Cares for Children?

UNICEF Reports:

On November 20, 1989, in what was a historic moment, the Convention on the Right of the Child (CRC) was adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by a General Assembly Resolution of the United Nations. It came into force on September 2, 1990, and has since been ratified by 193 countries except the United States. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has brought out a special edition of its “The State of the World’s Children” report on the occasion of 20 years of the CRC which coincides with the worst global financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression 80 years ago.

The report recognizes the need for a change in values that respects child rights, and uses terms such as “social transformation” and “reconstruction”, which almost everyone had taken for granted in a global economic scenario in the post-1990s.

What most people in the health and nutrition sector agree broadly is that government should first undertake to provide balanced nutrition to their populations through a universal public distribution system or otherwise, provide health services through a free and universal health care system, and provide free and quality education for all. The report says that an analysis of data from 120 developing countries for the period 1975-2000 indicates that an increase of 1 per cent in education spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) over a 15 year period could lead to universal primary school enrolment while reducing poverty.

The report says that nearly half of the developing world’s population lives without basic sanitation facilities. Access to clean drinking water is a distant dream for many people. Again, in some of these countries, the income gaps between different sections, of people are stark. There are people who live on less than half a dollar a day.

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