Where are the Children-Albina

[Guest guest]

DAVOS 2002: Where are the Children?

BY ALBINA DU BOISROUVRAY. © Earth Times News Service

Posted January 30, 2002

Mandela said that " there is no keener reflection of a society's soul than

the way it treats its children. " So where are the children here? And how are we

treating them? Not very well.

a.. 130 million of them, mostly girls, are not in primary school

b.. 160 million are seriously malnourished

c.. 250 million work and up to 150 million more roam the dangerous streets of

our megacities

d.. 100 million of them will be orphaned by AIDS in this decade

e.. 300,000 are child soldiers some of whom drink the blood of their captives

and play with the severed heads of those they have killed.

The problem that these children share is that they themselves have no voice;

children do not buy, do not vote, and are unable to lobby for their rights. And

so an increasing number of them find themselves decivilized and out of the

safety net of society. They do not count in the bottom line of business.

Speaking of those who have lost their parents, Portuguese Nobel laureate

Somaraga said " what is the weight of an orphan on the political scales in China

or Russia? What is the value of an orphan on the stock market in New York? "

But these children are supported by the first legally binding international

instrument that incorporates the full range of human rights ­ civil, political,

economic, social and cultural. It is called the " Convention on the Rights of the

Child. " It has been ratified by 191 countries with the exception of the United

States and Somalia. By ratifying this instrument governments agreed to commit

themselves to provide children with the right to health, education, safety,

freedom from sexual exploitation, hunger and infectious diseases. So why do

these children whither on the fringes of society?

Governments ratified the convention and then promptly forgot it. These poor

children - AIDS orphans, vulnerable children, street children - are the last in

line for everything. But they should be first. They are a priority for the

future of the global village. If we don't provide for them and get them back

into society as productive human beings, they will end up on the streets,

sexually abused, forced into labor and drug dealing, recruited into an army of

child soldiers, terrorists, or they will simply die of hunger and disease.

Where are these children in our forum workshops and sessions? Absent! Perhaps

the World Economic Forum and we social entrepreneurs should make this a special

topic for all Forum meetings. Maybe we can support groups to pressure

governments to quickly carry out their pledges without reservations that take

away the substance of the convention articles.

Children's well-being should be the one true benchmark by which the success of

governments' sustainable development policies is measured.

Copyright © 2002 The Earth Times All rights reserved.

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Jagdish Harsh ( jharsh@... )

François-Xavier Bagnoud (INDIA) ( www.fxb.org )

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