UNICEF’s Big Screamer

UNICEF has barred teeth at the world over the bedevils of children. The UN body is appealing for 868 million dollars to save nearly 1.4 million distressed children in the world.

UNICEF is concerned about the poor conditions in which they are born, and the harsh circumstances which visit their existence. Often, newborns are treated like unwelcome visitors, some have their lives cut short in the ignominious wave of infanticide.

The lucky ones who only earn this tag because they escaped early mortality, appear to have been invited to homes that are ill-prepared, and therefore are either helpless or attend to them the wrong way for lack of resources.

In places where children are found in their poor states, they are reckoned to be neglected, under-fed, and lack access to social services such as medical care, education, and recreation.

Some children got a false start as they had arrived with severe birth deformities, and to the extreme in relativities, are those infected with HIV at birth. To a large extent, this is evidence of poor handling of pregnancy. Infant mortality cases have been on ascendancy across the developing world where economic challenges have been determinant of situations or outcomes.

In Ghana, for instance, things have taken a different turn after mortalities were curbed, and these include child-negligent deaths stemming from children being left to their own devices in dangerous situations.

The heart-wrenching examples are drowning in large pools of water like swimming pools, mining pits covered by water, and rivers where small boats have capsized. Some had been washed away in the recurrent pluvial or murdered and body parts removed for rituals. Again, children have been caught in domestic fires that none survived.

 

Malnourishment is another thing that nags children in their innocence. Who feeds them in the absence of their natural caregivers-parents? Child undernourishment is one of the tenants on the table of UNICEF which is calling for decisive action on the plight of children.

In its latest report, UNICEF cites Sudan as one of the places that had flagrantly ignored children in the civil war that has gripped the country. Sudan sends us down memory lane when a period of internal strife in global hot spots denied children anything between their right to life and basic opportunities for healthy living.

This also serves as a reminder to powerful nations that starts war at will oblivious of the innocent victims. Using the African setting to deepen the discussion, Ghana hosted a Conference on War-Affected Children in April 2000 which revealed the other strands of their circumstances to be their conscription as child soldiers and refugees.

 

Child Soldiers (above) & Beggars

The total effect of these has been early death or child delinquency or children who trudge for a greater part of their lives. The third in the triad is child labor. The Ghana Report is of the opinion that whilst UNICEF blows the whistle on the plight of children, the quest ought to go with a strong campaign for responsible parenthood. It is almost a lifetime responsibility whose main ingredients are constructive home training, education, medical care, and absolute guidance.

You cannot give birth to live and expect that child to fend for itself. And since children are copycats, what examples are adults offering them?  Governments have also got to set up institutions with oversight responsibility for children and actuate welfare systems that have children in view.