The new millennium was celebrated with jubilation and great hope, encouraging the UN to draft a set of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for the community of nations, now re-coined as Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Welfare and development of children constitutes a prime focus area of the SDGs. What is the status of the childrenIJ Out of 1.9 billion global child population, there are nearly 500 million whose parents earn below the international poverty line of 1.90 dollars a day, 28 million children who have been forced out of their homes, 15.9 per cent of children who live in single-parent households, 5.5 million children who live in modern slavery , children of nearly 20 nations face high incidence of child marriage, more than 300 million children trapped under the child labour system , 160 million children stunted as reported in 2014 and 124 million children remain out of formal schools. There were 4.5 million infant deaths in 2015, which was about 75 per cent of all under-five deaths, occurred within the first year of life.
These quantitative narratives speak vividly about the deplorable situation of the children of the world, in spite of globalization, industrialization and advancement of science and technology. It throws an apocalyptic vision of society as much as an environmentalist forecasts about a climate disaster or the peace activist speaks about a future nuke-war.
According to sociologist, MacIver, society is a web of social relationship that is constantly changing. The society influences and is influenced by economic, political and social institutions. The phenomenon of child- exclusion is only a by-product of such complex interactions. The present society’s economic institutions are influenced by 2nd or 3rd generation industrialization, the globalization of trade and capital, increasing private ownership of means of production and services and weakening of the State’s role as the social-inequality -regulator. Similarly, the political institutions are controlled by the political parties who often lack higher commitment to social justice and inclusive development. The social institutions have also undergone change, giving rise to more individualism and materialism, replacing individual’s commitment to societal good and social inclusion of the weak.
Though we have succeeded in saving the lives of many children from diseases and accidental births, we are yet to bring “infant-mortality” to zero level and give better “quality of the life” to the children on the planet.
In 1989, the global community adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, for the population under 18 years of age that created four major rights for the global children such as right to life, right to development, right to protection and right to participation. Though all nations have signed the treaty except the USA, no national Government, including India, has put in place yet an Independent Child Rights Ministry. Nations are still treating children under the old social welfare or family welfare ideology, though they have ratified the UNCRC-a treaty advocating child rights’ ideology. Though in policy documents, the Governments talk about life-cycle approach for realization of child rights or child-welfare, in reality there is no single Ministry or single-window. Different departments of different tiers of Government carry out different services for the welfare of children leading to divergence, disharmony and wastage of efforts.
Globalisation did not fetch good news for the children too. Peru, a southern American country, entered into free trade agreement with USA through Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) which lasted between 1992 and 2001 and later was revised. As a result, the rural income grew but it did so unevenly. There was more growth in the coastal areas and less in the Selva (Amazonian) region. In the rural Sierra (Andean mountains) region, where the bulk of the rural poor lived, the real income stagnated or fell. Peru had an anti-child labour law similar to that of India that prohibited employment of children under the age of 14 and regulated jobs between 14 and 17 years. According to National Institute of Statistics and Informatics report of Peru, while 20.8 per cent of children between six and eleven years of age were engaged in the labour market in 1996, it “increased” to 26.9 per cent by 2001 after free trade. Incidence of child labour increased due to free trade. This is a lesson for India and other developing nations which are chasing globalization. There is a need for more studies in India, not only on the adverse impact of globalization but also on the non-intended effects of new industries, SEZs, commercial farming, farm aquaculture and other such activities on child-labour and child welfare. In Odisha, adverse effect of industrialization and commercial farming on children has been alleged.
The concentration of means of production, resources in the hands of a few national and trans-national individuals puts high risk on the future rights of children to their own “national wealth”, leading to inter-generation injustice on natural resources. The rights of children to nation’s natural resources and environment should be included in the UNCRC through an amendment. .
The tilting social value towards individualism in Post-Modernism era has been creating inter-spousal conflicts leading to children’s deprivation from joint parenting. Parents, viewing child-rearing as a family-management task, is disconnecting them emotionally from the children. They want children to grow fast and become employed at the earliest which puts heavy pressure on the children. The digital age and lack of social value environment puts the child in the information and entertainment info-highways unguided, with risk to physical and mental abuse.
The UNSDGs which aim at elimination of poverty and hunger for children ,reduction of neonatal mortality to 12 per 1,000 live births , reduction of under-5 mortality to 25 per 1,000 live births , children’s access to quality early childhood development and free- equitable- quality primary and secondary education by 2030, shall be only possible if there is an independent ministry for children and a set of measurable progress indicators. Nations like India, which have four types of societies such as the tribal pre-industrial, rural –semi-industrial, urban- industrial, cosmopolitan -post industrial ones ,should come up with four kinds of child development action plans on the basis of SDGs. Society, Governments, NGOs, UN agencies, international banks and corporate bodies must play their roles.