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	COVID-19: Children from poorest households across the globe have suffered greatest loss by UNICEF, Save the Children, agencies   Sep. 2020   150 million additional children plunged into poverty due to COVID-19, reports UNICEF, Save the Children   New analysis reveals the number of children living in multidimensional poverty – without access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation, or water – has increased by 15 per cent since the start of the pandemic.   The number of children living in multidimensional poverty has soared to approximately 1.2 billion due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new UNICEF and Save the Children analysis. This is a 15 per cent increase in the number of children living in deprivation in low- and middle-income countries, or an additional 150 million children since the pandemic hit earlier this year.   The multidimensional poverty analysis uses data on access to education, healthcare, housing, nutrition, sanitation and water from more than 70 countries. It highlights that around 45 per cent of children were severely deprived of at least one of these critical needs in the countries analyzed before the pandemic.   Although the analysis paints a dire picture already, UNICEF warns the situation will likely worsen in the months to come.   “COVID-19 and the lockdown measures imposed to prevent its spread have pushed millions of children deeper into poverty,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director. “Families on the cusp of escaping poverty have been pulled back in, while others are experiencing levels of deprivation they have never seen before. Most concerningly, we are closer to the beginning of this crisis than its end.”   The report notes that child poverty is much more than a monetary value. Although measures of monetary poverty such as household income are important, they provide only a partial view of the plight of children living in poverty. To understand the full extent of child poverty, all potential deprivations must be analysed directly. This also points to the need to implement multi-sectoral policies addressing health, education, nutrition, water and sanitation and housing deprivations to end multidimensional poverty.   Social protection, inclusive fiscal policies, investments in social services, and employment and labor market interventions to support families are critical to lifting children out of poverty and preventing further devastation.   This includes expanding access to quality health care and providing the tools and technology needed for children to continue their education remotely; and investing in family-friendly policies such as paid leave and child care.   “This pandemic has already caused the biggest global education emergency in history, and the increase in poverty will make it very hard for the most vulnerable children and their families to make up for the loss”, said Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children. “Children who lose out on education are more likely to be forced into child labour or early marriage and be trapped in a cycle of poverty for years to come. We cannot afford to let a whole generation of children become victims of this pandemic. National governments and the international community must step up to soften the blow.”   There are not only more children experiencing poverty than before, the poorest children are getting poorer as well, the report notes.   “We must act now to prevent additional children from being deprived in basic life needs like school, medicine, food, water and shelter,” said Fore. “Governments must prioritize the most marginalized children and their families through rapid expansion of social protection systems including cash transfers and child benefits, remote learning opportunities, healthcare services and school feeding. Making these critical investments now can help countries to prepare for future shocks.”   http://reliefweb.int/report/world/technical-note-impact-covid-19-child-poverty http://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-calls-averting-lost-generation-covid-19-threatens-cause-irreversible-harm http://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/six-point-plan-protect-children http://www.unicef-irc.org/covid19 http://www.unicef-irc.org/covid-children-library   Sep. 2020   COVID-19: Children from poorest households across the globe have suffered greatest loss of family income and have missed out most on education.   Save the Children conducts largest global survey of its kind among some 25,000 children and adults across 37 countries on the impact of the pandemic.   The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the education of children from poorer backgrounds and is widening the gap between rich and poor and boys and girls, a new global survey by Save the Children revealed today.   In the six months since the pandemic was announced, the most vulnerable children have disproportionately missed out on access to education, healthcare, food, and suffered the greatest protection risks.   The global survey revealed:   Two thirds of the children had no contact with teachers at all, during lockdown; eight in ten children believed they had learned little or nothing since schools closed.   93% of households that lost over half of their income due to the pandemic reported difficulties in accessing health services.   Violence at home doubled when schools were closed: when schools were closed, the reported rate was 17% compared to 8% when schools were open and the child was able to attend in person.   63% of girls are more often tasked to do more chores around the house, compared to 43% of boys.   Investment in education, health and nutrition, child protection services, mental health services and safety nets are urgently needed.   The findings were launched in the report Protect A Generation, based on the largest ever global survey of its kind since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared six months ago. Some 25,000 children and their caregivers shared their experiences, fears and hopes during this unprecedented global crisis.   The COVID-19 pandemic has in fact widened inequalities along wealth and gender lines, the survey found – with poorer households more likely to suffer income losses (82%) than those not classified as poor (70%).   When it comes to health, the survey showed the same concerning divide along wealth lines. Nine in ten households that lost over half of their income due to the pandemic reported difficulties in accessing health services. 45% of respondents from poor households reported having trouble paying for medical supplies during the pandemic.   Less than 1% of the poorer children interviewed had access to internet for distance learning. Among households that classified themselves as non-poor, it was 19%.   Around 37% of poorer families reported difficulties paying for learning materials, compared to 26% of families who classified themselves as non-poor.   Two thirds of the children said they had no contact with teachers at all during lockdown, increasing to eight in ten in East and Southern Africa.   Priscovia, 17, from Zambia said: “We ask for governments to spend more money to make sure that we can continue learning while at home by providing radios, TVs and internet learning. They must make sure that children in rural areas and from poor families also get to learn. We want to see mobile libraries passing in our communities delivering books for us to learn.”   Children who fall behind in their education run a greater risk of dropping out completely and falling victim to child labour, child marriage and other forms of exploitation.   Save the Children estimates that this pandemic has caused the largest education emergency in history.   Girls are more heavily impacted than boys, by the COVID-19 pandemic. 63% of the girls said they are doing more chores around the house and more than half (52%) reported they were spending more time caring for siblings. Among boys, that was 43% and 42% respectively. 20% of girls reported that they have too many chores to do to be able to learn, compared to 10% of boys.   Dayana is a 15-year-old girl who lives in the Sonsonate region in El Salvador. She told Save the Children:   “My mum worked in a house taking care of babies. Because of the coronavirus she could no longer go to work. We always did the cleaning but now we have to do it more often, to avoid getting sick. People are sad because the coronavirus has changed their lives and they can no longer do what they did before.”   The Save the Children survey also found that: More than 8 in 10 (83%) of children reported an increase in negative feelings;   Almost two thirds of the households (62%) found it difficult to provide their families with varied, nutritious food during the pandemic.   Inger Ashing, CEO of Save the Children, said: “COVID-19, has widened existing inequities. The poor became poorer, with a devastating impact on children’s access to healthcare, food, education and protection.”   “To protect an entire generation of children from losing out on a healthy and stable future, the world needs to urgently step up with debt relief for low-income countries and fragile states, so they can invest in the lives of their children. The needs of children and their opinions need to be at the centre of any plans to build back what the world has lost over the past months, to ensure that they will not pay the heaviest price.”   Save the Children urges governments to make sure children out of school have access to quality distance learning materials, that catch up classes are offered to children who have fallen behind and that all children have equal access to learning after schools reopen.   To prevent shocks from future pandemics, governments need to build social safety nets and strong health and nutrition systems, especially for the most vulnerable and marginalised households.   http://www.savethechildren.net/news/covid-19-children-poorest-households-across-globe-have-suffered-greatest-loss-family-income http://www.endchildhoodpoverty.org/covid19   * Protect a Generation report: http://bit.ly/35rnurm   Aug. 2020   Global Coalition to End Child Poverty: A Call to Action for governments to expand children’s access to Child-Sensitive Social Protection in the wake of COVID-19   COVID-19 threatens to push millions more children into poverty and deprivation across the world, risking lasting negative impacts on them and wider society. While governments have been putting in place short-term social protection measures to protect their citizens from the immediate economic impacts of the pandemic, this Call to Action explains why governments must maintain and scale up their investments in child-focused and child-sensitive social protection to avoid failing an entire future generation.   http://www.endchildhoodpoverty.org/publications-feed/2020/8/31/joint-statement http://www.socialprotectionfloorscoalition.org/2020/07/civil-society-call-for-a-global-fund-for-social-protection   July 2020   Economic fallout from COVID-19 tightens its grip on children, by David Stewart, Sola Engilbertsdottir (UNICEF).   “Poverty is when you don’t have any money. Because of a lack of money, children don’t have a chance to develop. They may not have a good profession or a good foundation for life.” This is how Marieta and Gor from Armenia recently described the impact of poverty.   Whether it’s the instant loss of income that so many parents face as a result of COVID-19 or the austerity measures that may follow plummeting GDP, children will bear the brunt of this pandemic long after the virus itself has been eradicated.   Projections change daily, with some predictions that the recession that follows COVID-19 will be the worst global crisis since World War II. As a result, up to 106 million more children could live in poor households by the end of the year, according to new projections from UNICEF and Save the Children.   This is on top of the 385 million children living in extreme poverty before COVID-19 hit, and the 663 million children living in multidimensional poverty, meaning monetary poverty combined with poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standards, or exposure to environmental hazards, disempowerment or the threat of violence.   As these stark economic predictions manifest, we will witness global poverty increasing. What deepens the tragedy is that children are disproportionately affected by poverty. Not only are they twice as likely to live in poverty than adults, they are also more forcefully affected by its consequences.   Children living in poverty are less likely to go to school, more likely to be forced into child labor, more likely to be married as children, and less likely to access nutritious food and quality healthcare.   “We are worried that our children won’t have enough to eat,” said Siriphon Yampikul, of Thailand. “We parents can go without food, that is OK. But our children cannot go without.”   The threat to children is not limited to the near term. The recovery phase will take years, especially in low- and middle-income countries where there is limited capacity to mitigate the impact of the economic slowdown.   In Sub-Saharan Africa for instance, temporary measures were introduced and existing programmes were scaled up following the 2008 crisis – but were constrained by weak social protection systems, low pre-existing coverage, and decreased revenues.   And you don’t need to look too far back in history to know that when a crisis hits, budget cuts often follow an initial spike in government spending on the response. These austerity measures produce devastating results for children. If the response to COVID-19 follows the same pattern, we will see how unequally and cruelly economic destruction is distributed.   Families on the cusp of escaping intergenerational cycles of poverty will be flung back in. In East Asia and the Pacific, for example, the virus is expected to keep almost 24 million people in poverty who would otherwise have escaped.   And for children living in countries already affected by conflict, fragility, and violence, the impact of this crisis will add to an already precarious situation, increasing further risks of instability.   Although past crises offer a grim picture of what’s to come, they also provide valuable insight into how we might mitigate the impact. UNICEF works to support governments and partners in more than 100 countries to design and implement social protection systems and measures such as cash transfers, which can play a major role in cushioning the impact of financial crises on households with children.   Currently, 2 out of 3 children have no access to any child or family benefits. Rapidly expanding these programmes to reach every child is a critical investment not just in children and families, but also in a world better prepared for future shocks.   As one child in Trinidad said: “Poverty upsets my community. It affects you and me.”   In addition to expansion of coverage, social protection responses must consider children’s specific needs and vulnerabilities, including those related to gender and disability.   There are mounting calls for debt relief to support low and middle-income countries. In countries everywhere, however, the scale of the solution has to match the scale of the problem.   Governments must take decisive action to prevent child poverty from deepening and inequality from worsening within and across countries. They must rapidly extend cash transfer programmes to reach every child, invest in family-friendly policies, such as paid leave and accessible, affordable childcare, and expand access to healthcare and other public services.   In the medium and longer term, they will need to strengthen and expand shock responsive social protection systems to make children, communities and economies more resilient.   The economic impacts of COVID-19 are without precedent in modern history. Unprecedented action to protect children and their families from the worst effects should be a fundamental yardstick for success.   * David Stewart is Chief of Child Poverty and Social Protection at UNICEF, and Sola Engilbertsdottir is a Policy Specialist at UNICEF.   http://blogs.unicef.org/blog/economic-fallout-from-covid-19-tightens-its-grip-on-children/ http://bit.ly/35rnurm http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/blogs/2020/coronavirus-invisible-victims-children-in-monetary-poor-househol http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/09/world-risks-losing-entire-generation-of-children-nobel-laureates-warn/ http://bit.ly/2DL9pcO http://www.endchildhoodpoverty.org/child-poverty-news-blogs http://www.unicef-irc.org/article/2005-evidence-review-of-past-health-and-economic-crises-provides-lessons-for-a-sustainable.html http://www.unicef-irc.org/article/1992-secondary-effects-of-covid-19-on-children-in-all-countries-will-be-unprecedented.html http://www.unicef-irc.org/covid19 http://www.unicef.org/press-releases/1-6-children-lives-extreme-poverty-world-bank-unicef-analysis-shows Visit the related web page
	Five things you didn’t know about practices that harm girls by Plan, UNFPA, African Child Policy Forum   Nov. 2020 (Reuters)   South Sudan, Chad and Eritrea are the worst African countries to be a girl, a first-of-its-kind index reported this week, with researchers warning that the pandemic could set back efforts to keep girls in school, out of work and safe from violence.   The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) ranked 52 African nations based on the rights and wellbeing of girls. The research institute judged governments on several factors including healthcare, education, and laws and policies that protect girls.   Mauritius, Tunisia, South Africa, Seychelles and Algeria topped the inaugural 'Girl-Friendliness Index', yet a report by the ACPF said the rankings were determined more by political commitment and accountability than by economic wealth.   The ACPF said African governments had broadly made some progress on girls' rights but that most countries were failing, citing issues ranging from malnutrition to early marriage.   The United Nations says 23% of girls on the continent are not in primary school against 19% of boys. Nearly four in 10 girls marry before turning 18, according to the World Bank.   "Girls across the continent continue to wake up to the daily reality of injustice," Joan Nyanyuki, executive director of the ACPF, said in a statement. "An entire generation of girls and young women is being failed."   By 2050, Africa will be home to about half a billion girls under the age of 18, according to the ACPF, which said a failure to invest in young women would result in huge economic losses.   Yet international and African regional laws on human and child rights largely ignore girls' issues, the report found.   Advocates said mental health was a growing concern among young girls in Africa, who are more likely than boys to attempt suicide - driven by factors such as violence and domestic work. And the coronavirus pandemic has left girls on the continent more vulnerable to child labour, human trafficking, missing out on healthcare and dropping out of school, advocates said.   "We were slowly moving out of this systemic subordination of girls.. COVID-19 completely reversed that" said Zemdena Abebe, an advisor for the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) - a network of civil society organisations. "All of us as a society are going to suffer the consequences of this relapse when it comes to gender equality," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. http://tmsnrt.rs/3m0PzLl   * Access the report: http://bit.ly/2IUSJSR   Aug. 2020   Under Siege: Impact of COVID-19 on Girls in Africa   Pandemics, like other crises, often result in the breakdown of social infrastructure and services, leading to health, transport, food, sanitation, legal, security and other governance structures being temporarily contracted or becoming dysfunctional. This may result in increased exposure of women and children to human rights abuses, including exposure to gender-based violence.   The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and added yet another layer of vulnerability to an already dire web of vulnerabilities of girls in the African continent, which constitute about 49% of the total child population. Critically, gender equality and girls’ multidimensional vulnerability have been accentuated to an unprecedented level.   The pandemic has triggered major concerns about the potential reversal of the strides achieved over the years towards gender equality and human development in Africa.   African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) and Plan International AU Liaison Office have launched of a new report on the impact of COVID-19 on girls titled: Under Siege: Impact of COVID-19 on Girls in Africa.   http://girls.africanchildforum.org/ http://tmsnrt.rs/31gGkPb http://plan-international.org/publications/halting-lives-impact-covid-19-girls http://www.one.org/international/blog/girls-impact-covid-19/ http://www.hrw.org/news/2020/10/12/child-marriage-pregnancies-soar-during-pandemic   June 2020   Five things you didn’t know about practices that harm girls, by Dr. Natalia Kanem. (UNFPA)   Every day, hundreds of thousands of girls around the world are harmed physically or psychologically, with the full knowledge and consent of their families, friends and communities. And without urgent action, the situation is likely to worsen.   These are the findings of UNFPA’s flagship 2020 State of World Population report, released today. The report examines the origin and extent of harmful practices around the world, and what must be done to stop them.   It identifies 19 harmful practices – ranging from breast ironing to virginity testing – that are considered to be human rights violations. But it focuses on three practices in particular that are widespread and persistent, despite near-universal condemnation: female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriage and son preference.   Below are five unexpected, and critical, takeaways from the report.   1. People who subject their daughters to these practices are often well intentioned.   Child marriage, FGM and son preference – which can be expressed as gender-biased sex selection or postnatal sex selection – cause profound and lasting harms. They can even be deadly.   Yet these practices are generally not performed out of malice. Rather, they are seen as being in the best interest of the family, or in the best interest of the girl herself.   Child marriage may be intended to secure a girl's future by making her husband’s family responsible for her care. It may be seen as a way to protect her from sexual violence, or as a way to safeguard her reputation if she becomes pregnant. FGM is often performed to ensure a girl is accepted by her future spouse or by the broader community. And families may choose to have boys over girls in communities where sons alone are tasked with caring for their ageing parents or carrying on the family name.“Good intentions, however, mean little to the girl who must abandon school and her friends to be forcibly wed, or to the girl who faces a lifetime of health problems because of mutilation from a harmful rite of passage,” said UNFPA’s Executive Director, Dr. Natalia Kanem, in her foreword to the report.   2. Harmful practices are rooted in gender inequality and serve the purpose of controlling girls’ bodies, sexuality or sexual desires.   Harmful practices are often tools of control over women’s sexuality and fertility.   In many places, FGM is thought to supress female sexuality, prevent infidelity or enhance sexual pleasure for men. Though it is sometimes considered a religious obligation, this is “to mask what is at the core, which is controlling women’s sexuality,” said Dr. Hania Sholkamy, an anthropologist at the American University in Cairo’s Social Research Center, who was interviewed in the report.   Child marriage, too, is frequently motivated by the desire to preserve a girl’s virginity for her husband. And son preference, when it is expressed as gender-biased sex selection, is an exertion of social and family preferences over a woman’s fertility.   3. Harmful practices are widespread, cutting across countries, cultures, religions, ethnicities and socioeconomic levels.   Child marriage, FGM and son preference take place around the world. The report includes accounts of child marriage taking place in the United States, stories about FGM from Colombia, Indonesia and Tanzania, and accounts of son preference in Azerbaijan and India, for instance.   Globally, the number of girls and women affected by these practices is staggering – and even, in some cases, growing. This year, 4.1 million girls are at risk of FGM. One in five marriages today involves a child bride. And son preference has resulted in a deficit of some 140 million females.   Although efforts to end harmful practices have seen success, the number of girls subjected to child marriage and FGM is believed to be increasing overall because of population growth in countries with a high prevalence of these practices.   4. The COVID-19 pandemic is likely worsening child marriage and FGM   The pandemic has vast impacts on the lives of girls and their families – from economic hardships and school closures to the loss of access to health services and community programmes.   There is little firm data on how the pandemic is affecting the exercise of harmful practices, but an analysis by UNFPA, Avenir Health, Johns Hopkins University (USA) and Victoria University (Australia) projected that both FGM and child marriage could significantly increase.   If the world sees a two-year delay in the implementation of programmes designed to eliminate FGM, an estimated 2 million additional cases of FGM could occur over the next decade that otherwise could have been averted. A one-year delay in programmes to end child marriage, coupled with the pandemic-caused economic downturn, could result in 13 million additional child marriages taking place over the next decade, researchers found.   UNFPA is also starting to see some preliminary indications that both FGM and child marriage are increasing, in at least some places.   In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, experts have noted a significant increase in child marriage in Kasai Central and Kasai regions; an assessment of the influence of the pandemic on this trend is underway by local NGOs. And in Tanzania, two of UNFPA’s partners have reported seeing FGM performed in large numbers even though the annual “cutting season” usually does not start until December.   5. We know how to end these harmful practices – and this is the moment to do it   Despite these challenges, the world has seen many promising signs and initiatives showing that it is possible to end harmful practices.   Experience in countries like the Republic of Korea shows that raising the status of women and girls, alongside policy and other changes, can end son preference, for example. And countries like Trinidad and Tobago have had recent success implementing legislative bans on child marriage.   But lasting solutions will require changes to social norms rooted in gender inequality.   UNFPA has released a document “How Changing Social Norms is Crucial to Achieving Gender Equality” designed to help organizations and communities achieve social norms change at scale, and therefore achieve gender equality.   “Beyond providing information and creating spaces for discussion, there is a need to collectively deliberate and explicitly agree to improve the health and well-being of girls and communities, which will support the movement to end the harmful and discriminatory norms,” said Nafissatou Diop, a UNFPA expert in the area of harmful practices and culture. “Context is crucial. There is a no one-size-fits-all approach.”   Right now is the moment to initiate these changes, as the world undergoes seismic shifts due to the pandemic and its social and economic fallout, she added.   “We see how the behaviour of one person can make a difference, how groups of people adopting a certain behaviour influences others,” Ms. Diop said. “We are seeing community influencers from different walks of life, not just political leaders and prominent figures, leading change. Not only does this give us hope, it also proves that collective decisions to shift behaviours can transform norms quickly.”   http://www.unfpa.org/news/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-practices-harm-girls http://www.unfpa.org/swop http://www.unfpa.org/covid19 http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/resources-to-help-during-covid-19-girls-education/ http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/resources-to-help-during-covid-19-feminist-analysis-of-the-economic-impact/ http://www.france24.com/en/20200901-virus-despair-forces-girls-across-asia-into-child-marriage Visit the related web page
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