Written evidence submitted by EveryChild
SUMMARY
EveryChild is an international NGO with a focus
on children without parental care, currently operational in 15
countries. EveryChild is concerned that there is insufficient
attention paid to children's rights to grow up in a family and
to be free from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect, both
in the MDG summit outcome and in the Government's response to
it. EveryChild believes that without a focus on children's rights
to protection and care, efforts to achieve the MDGs will be hindered.
We believe that in order for this trend to be reversed, it is
essential that:
The international community (including
the UK government) makes child protection and care a political
priority, mainstreamed into goals on nutrition, health, education,
justice and social protection, aimed at achieving the MDGs. Investment
should be directed towards schemes which promote this goal and
child rights indicators should be put in place to monitor their
progress. Particular emphasis should be put on interventions which
focus on reducing the number of children outside of parental care.
The UK Government demonstrates political
commitment to child protection and care by appointing child rights
champions within DFID at head office level, including individuals
with a specific remit to promote children's protection and care.
UK aid money should show political leadership on promoting child
well being by focusing on interventions which mainstream child
protection, such as cash transfer programmes.
The post MDG environment brings the rights
of the most vulnerable children to the centre of the political
agenda by promoting the inclusion of specific goals and targets
on child protection and care in the post MDG framework.
INTRODUCTION
1. As an international NGO with many years
experience working with children without parental care, EveryChild
is acutely aware of the devastating impact that being separated
from parents, and facing situations of abuse, exploitation or
neglect can have on children. These abuses of children's rights
to care and protection can increase child poverty and hunger,
stop children from attending school, increase exposure to HIV
and risky early pregnancy and exacerbate gender inequity. The
achievement of these rights is therefore central to reaching many
of the MDG targets.
2. Despite the devastating impact of growing
and widespread abuse of children's rights to care and protection,
these rights are widely ignored by those working to the achieve
the MDGs. To challenge this trend, EveryChild worked in collaboration
with eight other UK based INGOs to publish "Protect for the
Future. Placing Children's Care and Protection at the Heart of
the MDGs" in July 2010.[14]
This submission is based on evidence from this report (attached),
along with more recent outcomes from the summit and evidence on
DFID responses to children's rights.
LIMITED REFERENCE
TO CHILD
RIGHTS, PARTICULARLY
RIGHTS TO
PROTECTION AND
CARE, THREATENS
EFFECTIVE SUMMIT
OUTCOMES
3. The outcome document from the MDG summit
contains many valuable recommendations to achieve child-related
MDG goals, thereby securing better health, education and survival
outcomes for children around the world. Of particular value are
renewed commitments to addressing infant mortality, and recognition
of the central importance of addressing discrimination against
women and girls. However, the outcome document's references to
child rights are limited, with insufficient attention paid to
issues such as children's participation and ensuring equality
between and within generations. Of particular concern to EveryChild
is the lack of reference to children's rights not to be separated
from parents unless it is in their best interest, and to grow-up
free from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect.
4. This omission is serious as the achievement
of such rights is essential for ensuring that many of the MDGs
are reached. For example:
(a) MDG 1: Children who have been neglected by
their parents, or who are outside of parental care are highly
vulnerable to poverty and hunger. Extended families may struggle
to provide for extra mouths, or may discriminate against extra
children in the household. Children on the streets often have
to scavenge for food, and those in detention are commonly denied
food as a form of punishment. Some groups of children, such as
girls in some cultures; children with disabilities; or children
cared for by step parents, may be routinely given less food than
others in the household. These issues do not just face a small
minority of children—in some parts of the world, up to 30%
of child populations are without parental care, and although there
is limited information about child neglect in developing countries,
it is believed to be responsible for higher rates of girl child
mortality in countries such as India.
(b) MDG 2: A loss of parental care and abuse,
violence and exploitation affect children's ability to attend
school, particularly for girl children. For example, children
who have lost both parents are 12% less likely to be in school
than other children. Early marriage or child labour can both stop
children from going to school, and violence in the classroom at
the hands of teachers or other pupils is a major disincentive.
Again, these issues do not just affect a small proportion of children.
Around 30-40% of girls in many Asian and African countries are
married before they reach 18, and 13.6% of children are engaged
in harmful child labour.
5. There are some places in the outcome
document where rights to care and protection are referred to.
For example in relation to the importance of addressing violence
in schools or homes for achieving gender equity, and the elimination
of child labour for achieving poverty alleviation. However, there
are many more points in the report where opportunities to promote
care and protection have been missed, and where an additional
reference to these rights would have added greatly to proposed
strategies. For example:
(a) References to accessing basic services should
include acknowledgement of the exclusion of many vulnerable children,
including those outside of parental care and facing abuse and
exploitation.
(b) References to reducing inequality and social
exclusion should recognise that children outside of parental care
are amongst the most excluded and discriminated against.
(c) Discussions around social protection in the
achievement of MDG 1 should recognise the importance of linking
social and child protection services, in addition to stated recognition
of links between social protection and other services such as
health.
THE BRITISH
GOVERNMENT HAS
NOT MADE
A STRONG
ENOUGH COMMITMENT
TO PROMOTE
RIGHTS TO
PROTECTION AND
CARE IN
EFFORTS TO
ACHIEVE THE
MDGS
6. The British government made valuable
contributions to the outcome of the summit. Its continued commitment
to development aid in challenging economic circumstances; efforts
to reduce infant mortality and recognition of the importance of
gender issues are particularly to be praised. However, much more
could have been done to effectively promote children's rights,
particularly rights to protection and care, during the summit
and in strategies aimed at achieving the MDGs.
7. The Government's efforts to promote child
rights in the MDGs are severely hindered by the lack of senior
child rights champions in DFID, and limited broader staff capacity
to promote children's rights, with no individual staff members
with an explicit remit on protection and care issues. For example,
the one member of the Equity and Rights team working on child
rights has only 30% of her time allocated to child rights as a
whole, with only a small proportion of this time presumably spent
on child protection and care.
8. The limited commitment to promoting child
rights and children's protection and care in the MDGs and more
broadly is further reflected in the lack of attention paid to
these issues in key strategy documents, including the white paper
and the development sections of the coalition agreement. DFID
also do not currently clarify how much they spend on children,
let alone on child protection, have not invested in research or
strategy development on child protection and care issues, and
do not have a child protection policy to ensure that their own
interventions do not harm children.
9. In relation to the summit in particular,
DFID appears to have done little to promote children's rights
to protection and care. Recommendations made by EveryChild, in
collaboration with several international NGOs, on changes to the
summit outcome document to ensure that protection and care issues
are more widely included, appear not to have been acted on.
SUMMARY OF
MDG SUMMIT CONCLUSIONS
10. Government strategies to achieve the
MDGs currently ignore child rights or perceive them narrowly in
terms of rights to survival, health and education. Whilst these
rights are of course important, as argued above, they cannot be
achieved if children continue to be left vulnerable outside of
parental care, or abused, neglected and exploited in homes, schools
and the community.
11. This neglect of children's protection
and care will have a serious impact on DFID's ability to contribute
towards strategies agreed at the MDG summit. This can be illustrated
by focusing in particular on DFID's stated commitment to working
in fragile conflict affected states, to improving the lives of
women and girls, and to reducing infant mortality:
(a) Conflict and responding to climate change:
conflict and increasing natural disasters as a result of climate
change, dramatically increase the likelihood of parental separation,
either in the chaos surrounding the immediate aftermath of an
emergency, or as result of longer term coping strategies. If DFID
are serious about helping fragile and conflict affected states
as part of achieving the MDGs, they need to factor in the impacts
of parental separation, abuse and exploitation on children's health,
education, and survival.
(b) Improving the lives of women and girls:
Gender inequity is both a cause and consequence of abuses of children's
protective rights. Within families, girls are more likely to face
neglect and sexual abuse than boys. Girls can be pushed away from
their families through early exposure to forced marriage or trafficking,
and the low value given to girls in some cultures can make them
more vulnerable to child abandonment. Once living away from families
and communities, girls living on the streets, with husbands or
with employers are commonly exposed to gender based violence.
If the Government want to address gender inequality, they must
ensure that in addition to access to jobs or schools, protection
against gender based violence starts at an early age, and this
means investing in proper systems for children's protection and
care.
(c) Infant and maternal mortality: The
widespread and growing use of residential care continues to make
millions of young children more vulnerable to an early death.
Stopping sexual abuse and preventing early marriage is essential
for reducing risky early motherhood, when rates of maternal and
infant mortality are high. Girls aged under 15 are five times
more likely to die than those aged over 20, and babies born to
mothers aged under 18 are 60% more likely to die in the first
year than those born to older mothers. Again, if the Government
really want to reduce infant and maternal mortality, they must
make greater efforts to keep children safe and protected in family-based
care.
THE OPPORTUNITY
FOR A
RENEWED FOCUS
ON CHILD
RIGHTS IN
THE POST
2015 FRAMEWORK
12. As noted in the recommendations listed
below, there is much that the Government and international community
can do in the next five years to ensure more effective and equitable
progress against the MDGs. However, it is also important to look
beyond 2015 to the post MDG framework. EveryChild believes that
the Government must play a pivotal role in ensuring that the current
lack of attention to protection and care is included in this framework.
13. Currently there are no indicators in
the MDGs in areas such as the number of children without parental
care, child abuse, child labour or numbers of children in harmful
residential care. The absence of such indicators helps to perpetuate
their general neglect in global and national level policies and
resource allocations. Currently, minute proportions of budget
are allocated to children's protection (eg 0.035% in India) and
as noted above, these issues are not mainstreamed into the polices
of donors such as DFID.
14. The impact of such neglect is seen in
the rising numbers of children outside of parental care, many
of whom live on the streets without any protection, or in harmful
residential care.
15. The MDGs have been noted to have other
problems, including being "equity blind" paying no attention
to who is benefitting from gains in health, education or poverty
alleviation. Children outside of parental care and facing abuse,
neglect or exploitation are amongst the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach,
and focusing attention on these groups would go some way to ensuring
that a post MDG framework benefitted those most in need.
16. With its leading and respected role
in the international development arena, and its stated commitment
to reaching the most vulnerable and discriminated against, the
Government is well-placed to ensure that the post-MDG agenda addresses
the current gaps and shortfalls of the current MDGs by promoting
greater attention equity and rights, and in particular to children's
rights to protection and care.
14 http://www.everychild.org.uk/docs/protect_for_the_future.pdf Back
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