HEADLINE NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

SAARC member states striving for children’s uplift

Kathmandu, Dec. 26 (RSS): Lack of child rights and quality education for children in the South Asia region is leading to growing problems of child labour, malnutrition, girl trafficking and dreadful diseases like HIV/AIDS.

These kinds of problems have been growing in the region due to the lack of concrete steps and commitment to resolve these common problems of the countries of South Asia.

According to UNICEF data, 160,000 children in South Asia under fifteen years are affected by HIV/AIDS.

Out of 130 million children orphaned by HIV/AIDS worldwide, 125,000 are from South Asia.

The UNICEF statistics show that one out of every three young boys or girls aged between 15 to 24 in the world are infected by HIV/AIDS. The same statistics shows that a majority of the children between 15 to 19 years of age who live as street children, are orphans, or are working as child labour have been infected by the disease as a result of drug abuse and sexual exploitation.

So far 149 persons have died from HIV/AIDS in Nepal and 2,109 persons have been found to be infected by the disease till November. But the concerned health specialists estimate that the number of HIV/AIDS infected persons in the country is about 30,000 due to a number of reasons.

It may be recalled here that it was in 1984 that the first international non-governmental organisations’ child rights declaration was made.

Concern for child rights grew worldwide after the the United Nations General Assembly adopted the global child rights declaration in 1989. Nepal also showed its commitment to child rights by signing the child rights convention on September 14, 1990.

Although Nepal began to pay attention and give importance to child rights and welfare issues in the ensuing days while formulating its policies and plans, there have been no marked improvement in the status of the children in the country.

According to the Nepal labour force survey prepared by the International Labour Organisation, 1.7 million children out of the total 6,225,000 children between 5-14 years in Nepal are engaged in economic activities. Of them, 250,000 are estimated to be engaged in menial or hazardous work.

Similarly, the number of children suffering from malnutrition is also growing day by day in Nepal.

As per a nationwide survey on malnutrition conducted in 1975, 48.5 per cent of those surveyed were found to be suffering from acute malnutrition while 6.6 per cent were found to be suffering from immediate malnutrition. The multi-index survey carried out in 1997 showed 53 per cent children suffered from acute malnutrition and 16 per cent from immediate malnutrition.

The South Asian Human Development Report published in November 2000 has shown that the literacy rate of Nepali women was 21 per cent, the lowest in South Asia. Maldives has the highest women’s literacy rate in the region. Three out of every five women in South Asia are illiterate. Likewise, the data shows four in every five women in Nepal and three in every four women in Pakistan are illiterate.

The report, which was released in Nepal, states that 480 mothers died in every 100,000 live births.

Likewise, 208,000 women die every year in Southn Asia due to abortion and pregnancy-related problems.

Nepal and Bangladesh are the two countries in South Asia which are facing a growing girl trafficking problem.

Although Nepal has given serious attention in arresting the problem, the outcome has not been to the expected level.

The Fourth SAARC Summit held in Islamabad, Pakistan, had declared 1989 as the SAARC Year against Drug Abuse and Trafficking and the year 1990 as the SAARC Year of the Girl Child.

The joint voice being raised in South Asia against drug abuse and drug trafficking, although laudable in the present context when the scourge of drug abuse and trafficking is raising a lot of concern and anxiety the world over, is far from having made the felt impact in this direction.

The status of children, especially from the developing and under-developed countries of the third world, is a matter of great concern.

His late Majesty King Birendra had commented about the status of children during the Fourth SAARC Summit thus- "I recall a complicated problem which we all are having to confront with equally. We can get rid of the problem only if we take refuge in a world of imagination."

Seventy children are born every minute in the region and 4,000 children are added every hour. In this way the number of children added to the total population of the region at the end of the day gets over 100,000. What is more saddening is that most of them do not get to see the next day.

If only a small fraction of the sum of billions spent today on nuclear armaments in the world could be spent for the children, it would certainly help ensure their bright future.

Then, the Fifth SAARC Summit was held at Male, the capital of Maldives, in November 1990. The then prime minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai took part in the summit on behalf of Nepal.

The three-day summit had taken the decision to control the trafficking of narcotic drugs and observe the decade of 1991-2000 as the SAARC Decade of the Girl Child.

Had all the member countries worked in accordance with the collective commitment concerning the rights of children made at the fourth and the fifth summits, SAARC would have become a model in the international arena.

It is now believed that the Eleventh SAARC Summit to be hosted at Kathmandu, the capital, from January 4 to 6 will take serious and specific steps on child’s rights and the prevention of girl trafficking.

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