DUBAI, 30 March 2022 – It is my great pleasure to be here today at the World Government Forum on my first visit to the United Arab Emirates as UNICEF Executive Director.
The theme of our session — societal wellbeing — is timely and critically important.
So, I would like to begin my remarks by invoking the late Nelson Mandela, who famously said that “there is no keener reflection of a society than how it treats its children.” By extension, there is no greater measure of a society’s wellbeing than the investments it makes in the wellbeing of its children.
Children are the world’s most precious resource. And yet, challenges to the rights and the wellbeing of children are increasing, seemingly by the day.
More than 426 million children live in conflict zones — more children than at any time in UNICEF’s 75-year history.
As we see so painfully in Ukraine and many other conflicts, the impact on children is horrific. They are being killed and maimed. They are being recruited to support or directly participate in the fighting. The schools they attend and the hospitals they visit are threatened, attacked, or occupied by armed actors. And they are being forcibly displaced from their homes — putting them at risk of exploitation and trafficking.
I was recently in Romania on the border with Ukraine, where tens of thousands of women and children have fled to escape the violence. The impact of conflict on children is both immediate and long lasting.
And it’s not just conflict…
The number of climate-related disasters has tripled in the last 30 years, with a profound impact on children.
Approximately 1 billion children – nearly half the world’s children – live in countries classified as at extremely high-risk to the impacts of climate change.
All these threats to children are harmful enough on their own. COVID-19 has exponentially increased their impact.
The numbers are staggering.
After nearly a quarter century of steady global declines, we estimate that 100 million additional children are now living in multidimensional poverty. Increasing poverty could push an additional 9 million children into child labour by the end of this year.
The pandemic has closed schools all over the world — exacerbating what was already a global learning crisis. Millions of children were already out of school and millions more were in school but not mastering foundational reading and math skills.
The impact on child health is also profound.
In 2020 alone, an additional 23 million children didn’t receive essential vaccinations that protect their lives and their healthy development. We have seen outbreaks of polio in Ukraine, in several countries in Africa, in parts of Asia, and in Israel.
An additional 9 million children are at risk of wasting — many of them caught in humanitarian crises without access to treatment.
I was recently in rural Afghanistan, and I saw the impact of conflict, drought, and a collapsing economy on children and their mothers. In a hospital in Kandahar, I saw emaciated babies, too weak even to cry. I met a mother who told me that she and her 5 children were surviving on bread and water.
The situation facing children in Yemen, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Nigeria is no less dire.
The pandemic is also having an impact on the wellbeing of girls. UNICEF estimates that an additional 10 million girls are at risk for child marriage, and there is mounting evidence of increases in gender-based violence and sexual abuse.
And children’s mental health has been severely affected during the pandemic, in high-, middle-, and low-income countries alike.
These figures represent the lives and futures of millions of children — and the future of their societies. The economic impact of pandemic-caused school closures alone could cause a US$ 17 trillion loss in lifetime earnings for this entire generation of schoolchildren.
And yet, children have been largely overlooked in the pandemic response.
UNICEF has called on the world to put children at the center of global, national, and local pandemic response and recovery planning and budgeting.
We need to use this moment to drive greater investment in essential, proven, cost-effective child survival systems. Stronger primary health services. A restoration of routine immunization. Expanded WASH and nutrition programmes.
We need to use this moment to address the global learning crisis. UNICEF just released data showing that even before the pandemic hit, 50 per cent of children in low-income countries could not read a simple sentence.
We now project that this number may be as high as 70 per cent. What can the future hold for these children?
UNICEF is calling on governments to make urgent investments in education, focused on four priorities:
Account for every child and bring them all back into the classroom. Assess every child to measure their learning. Accelerate every child’s learning by providing support for them to catch up in the classroom.
And assure the wellbeing and protection of children. Children’s learning depends on them being safe and well-nourished. Education systems can — and should — play a part in that.
We also need to invest in scaling up social protection programmes. Direct support like cash transfer programs is the most effective way to help families cover income losses in emergencies and other crises. By helping families avoid slipping into poverty in a way that respects their autonomy and protects their dignity, we can accelerate results for children across multiple fronts.
In everything we do, we need to do more to address gender inequality — an issue that has been central to my career, and which is very close to my heart.
Around the world today, millions of girls are denied their right to healthcare and education. They are denied their right to live free from gender discrimination, sexual violence, and harmful practices. They are denied their right to make decisions concerning their own lives.
We need to invest more in programmes that support and empower adolescent girls’ learning and development. We need to find ways of working with communities and families to break down barriers and harmful norms that hold girls back.
And we need to invest in family-friendly interventions that help increase employment and enable women’s economic participation. Approximately 54 million women left the global workforce in the first year of the pandemic — often to care for children and other family members. This decreased family income and plunged millions of children into poverty.
Above all, our recovery must be an inclusive recovery. The pandemic has widened disparities and exacerbated inequality all over the world. The children with the least to lose are losing the most. The cost to these children is unconscionable — and the cost to their societies is cause for concern.
We need to use data to identify which children are being left behind. We need to monitor how well our programmes are reaching those children. And we need to prioritize investments in basic services and social protection programmes that make all the difference for the most disadvantaged children.
At a minimum, we must protect social spending for children. Investments in social sectors serving the most disadvantaged should be the last in line for budget cuts.
This is not only right thing to do. It is also the strategic thing to do.
Nobel Laureate James Heckman has written widely on the economics of human potential.
He and others have proven that investments in children’s potential — in nutrition, in early childhood learning, in routine immunization, in girls’ education, in skills and employment training for young adults — consistently offer the highest return. Returns on investment in the youngest children are greater than at any other time in human development.
Every child has the right to reach their full potential — and every society has an enormous stake in helping them to do so.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
I wish I did not have to paint such a dire picture. The situation is indeed extremely urgent for millions of children — but the problems are not insurmountable.
We know that investing in scaling up proven interventions and strengthening essential systems saves children’s lives. It changes children’s lives. And it changes their societies — reducing inequity and spurring prosperity for all.
As the world comes together to take stock and make plans for a global recovery — and to “rescue the SDGs”, as the Secretary-General recently said — we must put children at the center of the agenda. It is the only path to truly sustainable development and truly inclusive societal wellbeing.
In closing, I would like to thank you again for inviting me to join you in this critical discussion. The United Arab Emirates is one of UNICEF’s most valued partners. I look forward to continuing our partnership as we work together to improve the lives of the world’s most disadvantaged children — and to protect the rights of every child.
Thank you.
Source: UN Children’s Fund