The Executive Director of the United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) has called on African leaders to adopt child-centered standards as the primary measure for gauging progress under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad).
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Africa Economic Summit on Thursday, Carol Bellamy argued that no single measure of development predicted
the future as reliably as the well-being of a country’s youngest citizens.
She urged African leaders to focus their limited resources on investments in health, education, equality and protection for children while also saying they shouldn’t be shy about comparing their progress against other nations of similar economic strength and level of development.
”We all agree that in order to sustain human progress, a government must invest in its children,” she told summit participants. ”Doing so is both a more and an economic imperative. Thus the well-being of children should become the most important standard for measuring achievement.”
Bellamy’s proposal was presented to the summit in the form of a 50-page white paper entitled, ”The Young Face of Nepad”. She said she supported Nepad’s peer review mechanism, and that Unicef and other United Nations agencies stood ready to assist in such reviews by providing the uniform statistical data needed to measure the progress of African countries. – I-Net Bridge