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Invest in children and reap the rewards: UNICEF
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says world leaders should invest in early childhood, in part because it makes good economic sense. UNICEF's new report, The State of the World's Children 2001, concludes that investing in early childhood assures "great economic returns" and reduced "social and economic disparities and gender inequalities" and allows countries to compete globally.
The report, which focuses on ages 0 to 3, also emphasizes leaders' moral and legal obligations, as set forth in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. UNICEF calls for more creative, systemic approaches to fulfilling children's needs for health, nutrition, safe environments and psychosocial and cognitive development. "Early childhood should merit the highest-priority attention of any responsible government in terms of laws, policies, programs and resource allocation," states the report. Unfortunately, "these are the years that receive the least attention." According to UNICEF, about 129 million children were born in 2000 and almost 11 million children under age 5 died, most from easily preventable causes. This September, the United Nations General Assembly will hold a Special Session on Children to continue work from the 1990 World Summit for Children and "produce a global agenda with a set of goals and plans of action." — Barbara Sibbald, CMAJ
Copyright 2001 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors |
