Too many countries in East Asia and the Pacific continue to fail their children despite dramatic economic growth in parts of the region, the United Nations children’s fund Unicef said on Monday.
The issue ”is less one of finance than of effort and commitment,” Unicef’s regional office said in a report released at the start of a conference in Bali on children.
Economic growth had helped reduce poverty in the region but many millions still existed precariously, Unicef said.
The vast majority also lived free from war. But a mass movement from the land to the cities ”is having a deeply disruptive effect on social structures”.
China had around 80-million rural migrants living unofficially in cities, including five million children — and a total of around 150 000 street children.
Traditional family — or village-based welfare systems had been disrupted.
The weakening of families, due to the recent economic downturn and youth migration to cities, also exposed young people to new dangers including drug abuse and sexual exploitation.
Myanmar’s methamphetamine industry had created an enormous increase in use by young people.
The number of malnourished children aged under five had fallen from 24% to 17% between 1990-2000 but improvements in China skewed the picture.
Excluding China, an average 28% of children in the region were underweight — almost as high as sub-Saharan Africa.
UNHCR said poverty was only one factor and it was important to educate mothers to give children proper nutrition — especially breastfeeding rather than bottle-feeding for the first six months.
Mothers should be well-nourished and have access to basic health services.
Because efforts to combat malnutrition had been limited, ”millions of children throughout the region continue to die each year and millions more will never have been allowed to reach their full potential.”
Education had been one of the region’s great successes.
East Asia/Pacific had also made good progress reducing the number of children under five who die, thanks to immunisation and proper treatment of diarrhoea. But there were considerable differences within countries.
The highest death rate was in Cambodia with 138 deaths per 1 000 live births — a higher figure than in 1990.
Many states had made little progress since 1990 in reducing the maternal mortality rate, partly because male officials were reluctant to make the necessary investment.
”But no country should consider itself so poor that it is prepared to allow young mothers to die.”
Unicef said HIV/Aids was still spreading across the region, with between two and 3,5-million infected. But Thailand and Cambodia had shown the tide could be turned.
There was widespread ignorance among the young about the disease. Young sex workers were especially in danger, often forced to serve up to 10 customers a day.
The Aids epidemic had also fuelled demand for young prostitutes who were mistakenly thought less likely to be infected.
The most significant mode of HIV transmission to children under 15 was from mothers but this was preventable, Unicef said.
It said more than half a million children in the region had lost one or both parents to Aids and the number was expected to double by 2005.
The report said an estimated 300 000-400 000 children in the region were victims of trafficking, mainly for the sex industry.
Thailand’s ”thriving sex industry,” which previously recruited from the north of the country, was now using children and adults from Cambodia, Laos, China and Myanmar as Thai living standards rose.
In Thailand up a quarter of sex workers were under 18 and in Indonesia one-third. Most exploitation of child sex workers was by local men. – Sapa-AFP