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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Friends of WFP Enewsletter - June 2009
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Children carrying the burden of work in Afghanistan
By Farida Ayari
This year’s World Day against Child Labour, celebrated on 12 June, highlighted the continuing challenges to eliminating the worst forms of child labour, with a focus on exploitation of girls. Here is a related story.
KABUL, Afghanistan, 23 June 2009 – Child labour is an issue of growing concern in Afghanistan. The ongoing political tensions, insecurity and rising food prices have put the livelihoods of vulnerable families and children increasingly at risk.
In Afghanistan, as in many other countries, the child labour problem is rooted in poverty and in socioeconomic inequalities based on gender and disability. Already, 30 percent of Afghan children aged 5 to 14 are engaged in some form of work.
Girls face particular hardshipsNafissa, 13, is one such child labourer. She toils along the border at Torkham, smuggling in heavy bags of flour from Pakistan. For now, Nafissa’s dream of someday becoming a teacher remains intact, and she says she still hopes for “a peaceful Afghanistan where each and every child gets a proper education.”
Her friend Masooma, 14, seems more concerned with the present challenge of avoiding the border police.
“They are very mean to us, and they beat us every time they catch us smuggling flour,” she says.
Girls in Afghanistan face particular disadvantages and hardships because of discriminatory traditional practices and attitudes. More than boys, they are expected to take on unpaid household work for their families, which may include child care, cooking, cleaning and fetching water and fuel.
Focus on education and preventionTo combat growing child labour concerns in Afghanistan, UNICEF is supporting the National Strategy for Children at Risk, which aims to help the most vulnerable families protect and care for their children.
UNICEF is giving particular attention to children, like Nafissa and Masooma, who work along the border. In Torkham, 400 working children were given learning opportunities and over 1,000 working children took part in UNICEF-sponsored activities in 2008.
With strong contributions and involvement from the local communities, UNICEF is also facilitating the reintegration of out-of-school children. More than 160,000 children across 26 provinces are now attending UNICEF-assisted community-based schools.
Additional efforts are under way this year, as UNICEF and its governmental and non-governmental partners work to strengthen basic services and supports for working children and their families in their places of origin. The goal is to prevent families from ever having to send their children away from home to work, whether in the border areas or elsewhere.
In Afghanistan, as in many other countries, the child labour problem is rooted in poverty and in socioeconomic inequalities based on gender and disability. Already, 30 percent of Afghan children aged 5 to 14 are engaged in some form of work.
Girls face particular hardshipsNafissa, 13, is one such child labourer. She toils along the border at Torkham, smuggling in heavy bags of flour from Pakistan. For now, Nafissa’s dream of someday becoming a teacher remains intact, and she says she still hopes for “a peaceful Afghanistan where each and every child gets a proper education.”
Her friend Masooma, 14, seems more concerned with the present challenge of avoiding the border police.
“They are very mean to us, and they beat us every time they catch us smuggling flour,” she says.
Girls in Afghanistan face particular disadvantages and hardships because of discriminatory traditional practices and attitudes. More than boys, they are expected to take on unpaid household work for their families, which may include child care, cooking, cleaning and fetching water and fuel.
Focus on education and preventionTo combat growing child labour concerns in Afghanistan, UNICEF is supporting the National Strategy for Children at Risk, which aims to help the most vulnerable families protect and care for their children.
UNICEF is giving particular attention to children, like Nafissa and Masooma, who work along the border. In Torkham, 400 working children were given learning opportunities and over 1,000 working children took part in UNICEF-sponsored activities in 2008.
With strong contributions and involvement from the local communities, UNICEF is also facilitating the reintegration of out-of-school children. More than 160,000 children across 26 provinces are now attending UNICEF-assisted community-based schools.
Additional efforts are under way this year, as UNICEF and its governmental and non-governmental partners work to strengthen basic services and supports for working children and their families in their places of origin. The goal is to prevent families from ever having to send their children away from home to work, whether in the border areas or elsewhere.
Children carrying the burden of work in Afghanistan© UNICEF Afghanistan/2009/LeMoyne
Friday, June 19, 2009
WHO and UNICEF
call for strengthened risk reduction measures to protect hospitals and schools from the impact of disasters
GENEVA, 18 June, 2009 – The World Health Organization and UNICEF today called on governments to strengthen risk reduction measures in four key areas so that health and education systems are able to cope with disasters, including the risks from climate change. These are:
Build school and health infrastructure according to disaster resilience standards;
Conduct assessment of the safety of hospitals and schools and take remedial action to make them safer;
Ensure all hospitals and schools implement emergency and disaster preparedness programmes, including staff training and exercises;
Listen to and support communities in disaster risk reduction through education and training.
WHO and UNICEF highlighted these issues during the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, a key gathering of the world's risk reduction community organized by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in Geneva from 16-19 June 2009.
Disasters have a major health, educational, economic, physical, and psychosocial impact on the most vulnerable, notably children, women and aged persons. Besides destroying human lives, disasters damage hospital and school infrastructures, disrupt educational cycles, exacerbate poverty, force children to drop out of school, and affect the resilience of communities.
The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which caused some 240,000 deaths in ten Asian and African countries, raised global awareness about the importance of disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness.
The massive earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan Province in 2008 left 88,000 people dead or missing, 400,000 injured, and 11,000 hospitals damaged or destroyed. Over 12,000 schools or 40 per cent of all schools in Sichuan were damaged, resulting in thousands of children being killed or injured. These events highlight growing concern over the effects of disasters on education and health.
Children are among the most at risk and an estimated 175 million children annually will be affected by disasters. In recent years, large numbers of schools have been destroyed by disasters resulting in the loss of lives of children and the stalling of access to education. Children also suffer from the psychosocial effects of disasters, hindering their opportunities for development.
"The destruction and carnage inflicted on hospitals, schools, and the people who use them are senseless losses that could have been prevented in many cases," said Dr Eric Laroche, WHO's Assistant Director-General for Health Action in Crises. "Such tragedies can be avoided or reduced if governments adopt disaster risk reduction strategies aimed at protecting people's health. One prime way of doing this is making hospitals safer by enforcing and implementing building codes to ensure quality construction, training staff to be prepared for emergencies and assessing existing health facilities to learn what, if any, vulnerabilities they may have."
A High Level Panel on Safe Schools and Hospitals, jointly organized by UNISDR, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO and World Bank during the Global Platform consultation, covered the experience of France, Mexico, Philippines and Tajikistan in making hospitals and schools safer from disasters and emphasized the vital role that scientific evidence plays.
Mexico has demonstrated that it is possible to make hospitals safer by applying a Hospital Safety Index to hundreds of hospitals across the country and strengthened them to be more resilient and better prepared to respond to emergencies and disasters.
Risk reduction is an imperative for education as well as health.
“The school must be a safe place that protects children and defends their right to education,” said Louis-Georges Arsenault, UNICEF’s Director of the Office of Emergency Programmes. “However, children can also serve as powerful protagonists for change. The integration of disaster risk reduction into the school curriculum equips children with knowledge of the risks, and what actions can be taken to mitigate the risks. Education is therefore an important aspect of risk reduction. Not only is it a child’s right, but education also protects lives and safeguard development gains.”
UNICEF and WHO are active members of the UNISDR system and advocate globally for the protection of schools and hospitals from disasters. The current and previous biennial World Disaster Reduction campaigns organized by UNISDR have been devoted to "Disaster risk reduction begins at schools" (2006-2007) and "Hospitals Safe from Disasters" (2008-2009). WHO is also devoting its 2009 World Health Day to the theme "Save lives. Make hospitals safe in emergencies."
Build school and health infrastructure according to disaster resilience standards;
Conduct assessment of the safety of hospitals and schools and take remedial action to make them safer;
Ensure all hospitals and schools implement emergency and disaster preparedness programmes, including staff training and exercises;
Listen to and support communities in disaster risk reduction through education and training.
WHO and UNICEF highlighted these issues during the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, a key gathering of the world's risk reduction community organized by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in Geneva from 16-19 June 2009.
Disasters have a major health, educational, economic, physical, and psychosocial impact on the most vulnerable, notably children, women and aged persons. Besides destroying human lives, disasters damage hospital and school infrastructures, disrupt educational cycles, exacerbate poverty, force children to drop out of school, and affect the resilience of communities.
The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which caused some 240,000 deaths in ten Asian and African countries, raised global awareness about the importance of disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness.
The massive earthquake that struck China’s Sichuan Province in 2008 left 88,000 people dead or missing, 400,000 injured, and 11,000 hospitals damaged or destroyed. Over 12,000 schools or 40 per cent of all schools in Sichuan were damaged, resulting in thousands of children being killed or injured. These events highlight growing concern over the effects of disasters on education and health.
Children are among the most at risk and an estimated 175 million children annually will be affected by disasters. In recent years, large numbers of schools have been destroyed by disasters resulting in the loss of lives of children and the stalling of access to education. Children also suffer from the psychosocial effects of disasters, hindering their opportunities for development.
"The destruction and carnage inflicted on hospitals, schools, and the people who use them are senseless losses that could have been prevented in many cases," said Dr Eric Laroche, WHO's Assistant Director-General for Health Action in Crises. "Such tragedies can be avoided or reduced if governments adopt disaster risk reduction strategies aimed at protecting people's health. One prime way of doing this is making hospitals safer by enforcing and implementing building codes to ensure quality construction, training staff to be prepared for emergencies and assessing existing health facilities to learn what, if any, vulnerabilities they may have."
A High Level Panel on Safe Schools and Hospitals, jointly organized by UNISDR, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO and World Bank during the Global Platform consultation, covered the experience of France, Mexico, Philippines and Tajikistan in making hospitals and schools safer from disasters and emphasized the vital role that scientific evidence plays.
Mexico has demonstrated that it is possible to make hospitals safer by applying a Hospital Safety Index to hundreds of hospitals across the country and strengthened them to be more resilient and better prepared to respond to emergencies and disasters.
Risk reduction is an imperative for education as well as health.
“The school must be a safe place that protects children and defends their right to education,” said Louis-Georges Arsenault, UNICEF’s Director of the Office of Emergency Programmes. “However, children can also serve as powerful protagonists for change. The integration of disaster risk reduction into the school curriculum equips children with knowledge of the risks, and what actions can be taken to mitigate the risks. Education is therefore an important aspect of risk reduction. Not only is it a child’s right, but education also protects lives and safeguard development gains.”
UNICEF and WHO are active members of the UNISDR system and advocate globally for the protection of schools and hospitals from disasters. The current and previous biennial World Disaster Reduction campaigns organized by UNISDR have been devoted to "Disaster risk reduction begins at schools" (2006-2007) and "Hospitals Safe from Disasters" (2008-2009). WHO is also devoting its 2009 World Health Day to the theme "Save lives. Make hospitals safe in emergencies."
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