Conflict, hunger, poverty impede children's early development: Türk
Baku, March 14, AZERTAC
Governments everywhere are “letting children down instead of lifting them up” as conflict, hunger, poverty and climate change hold back child development, UN rights chief Volker Türk told Member States in Geneva on Thursday.
According to the UN’s official website, during a discussion on early childhood development, the High Commissioner for Human Rights underscored that 80 per cent of the human brain is formed in the first three years of life, as he appealed for a reset in youth-centred policy.
“Investments in early childhood are one of the smartest ways to achieve sustainable economic development; studies indicate that the economic return can be up to 13 times the amount invested,” he insisted.
Citing South Africa's Child Support Grant and the Bolsa Familia programme in Brazil, the High Commissioner pointed out that they “help to ensure that children born into the toughest circumstances can still have the most essential needs covered”.
Today’s threats to children are also virtual, and youngsters everywhere lack the tools to stay safe online, Mr. Türk continued, before warning that children’s access to food, basic sanitation and drinking water remains unequal across the world; two in five lack access even to basic sanitation.
Climate change is also likely to make children and future generations more vulnerable, Mr. Türk told the Council, noting that in the next 30 years, eight times as many children could be exposed to extreme heat waves and twice as many to extreme wildfires.
Emphasizing the wider benefit to society of early childhood development, Dr. Najat Maalla M’jid, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on violence against children, said that that “even the very youngest and those in the most vulnerable situations have rights, including rights to development, protection and participation”, as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
More than one million new neural connections form every second in the first few years of life, the practicing paediatrician explained, as she warned of the long-term impacts on very young children’s health, learning and behaviour when caregivers are unable to provide nurturing and safe care.
Many children with disabilities or from minorities have no access to supportive early child development services, along with others in poor or emergency settings, Dr. M’jid noted.
“Given the unprecedented humanitarian crisis - due to conflict and forced displacement - we must ensure that [early child development] programmes are embedded in the humanitarian response,” she insisted.
Speaking on behalf of the Committee on the Rights of the Child which assesses the progress that countries make in adhering to the Convention, Philip Jaffé insisted that for children to thrive in their early years, governments should implement comprehensive and rights-based, coordinated strategies and across departments and at central and local levels.
In addition, “there must be special consideration and social support given to the early childhood needs of children with disabilities and their families,” Mr. Jaffé said.
