Friday, 20 November 2009
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Australia's duty to help Pacific through financial crisis says UNICEF
The United Nations children's welfare body UNICEF says Australia has a special duty to help Pacific nations weather the after-effects of the global financial crisis.
Spokesman Martin Thomas says UNICEF's report on the state of children worldwide shows the GFC has had a disproportionate impact on children.
He said with food prices and the cost of education going up, many children in countries such as Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Solomon islands aren't faring well. The evidence suggests that they're going to be impacted now more than ever, that the Pacific is going late into the global financial crisis but it will be impacted much deeper, he said.
Countries such as Fiji and others instead of boosting...measures that can provide protection for the poor and particularly children...these budgets are actually being cut.
Mr Thomas said many children have been taken out of school due to cost. He said in the Pacific region one in five children are not going to primary school and one in ten children are underweight, affecting brain development. One thing we're learning increasingly from the global financial crisis is that while the impact on an adult may be temporary such as unemployment or even hunger the impact on children is permanent, he said. So once a child drops out of school the evidence seems to be that they may never get back into school.
PACN 11-19-09
Sometime we wonder when will our poor ignorant population open their eyes to see what is happening thanks to "A Promise of Quality" and "The Choice of the Pacific" yet not a single blog commented on the root cause of the prices and income board motivation to remove controls on those items. Perhaps some of us are too full of ourselves and forget that it is NOT ABOUT US. Just wait and see when the terminator seed technology is introduced as part of the land reforms then you will see what cyclical poverty is all about, thanks to Chodo.
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