Singapore meeting to focus on crises-hit children

UN CHILDREN'S FUND

Just when we're hearing of factories closing at a calamitous rate as the global economic crisis squeezes countries in Asia, we learn of Pan Nan getting hired by one in Cambodia this month. This should be good news. Her family has been eating leaves and scavenging for snails and crabs in the rice paddies.

But Pan Nan is only 16. She lied about age on her application and then quit school to take the job in the capital, two hours from her village. She and her widowed mother are counting on the US$10 after expenses she will send home each month to pay debts and frequent medical bills.

In the Asia-Pacific region, where about 600 million people live in poverty - on US$1 a day or less - the impact of the food and economic crises has been devastating. According to recent research, a 10% increase in food prices has pushed an estimated 105 million more people into poverty - a reversal of about seven years' work on poverty reduction. Poor families in Asia spend most of their income on food. To address the worsening situation of the food, fuel and financial crises on children, Unicef is bringing together some 150 decision-makers - including finance ministers, senior government officials, academics and other experts, for a conference this week at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, with the support of the Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Unicef-commissioned researchers have looked at the lessons learned from previous financial emergencies, such as the Asian crisis of 1997. They will make the case for investing in children and social protection. They will show that now is not the time to cut back on social spending. Now more than ever we need to maintain or scale up measures to protect children.

We know from the Asian financial crisis experience that many families were unable to keep up their strong cultural commitment to education and that many children were forced to drop out of school. Secondary school enrolment in Indonesia dropped by 11% during the 1997 crisis and by 8% in the Philippines. When large numbers of children like Pan Nan leave school to help their family buy food or pay for medical care, their long-term development suffers, as do the prospects for their countries' sustained development.

At a time when social spending and investment in programmes protecting children are most needed, they may be the first to be cut. During the Asian financial crisis, for example, public health spending was reduced. In Thailand it declined by 9% in 1998, while total public health expenditures in Indonesia fell by 7% in 1998 and another 12% the following year.

Most governments in the region have responded to the food price spikes with schemes such as price controls, subsidies, cash transfer for food, food rations, school feeding programmes, guaranteed compulsory education or financial incentives for teacher education. But inadequate coverage is still an issue.

The World Bank reported two years prior to the current crises that interventions to improve child nutrition outcomes could generate benefits that are many times the cost of the interventions. There is a strong case for placing children at the centre of social protection systems.

"The future of my children is a big concern for me, but it is out of my control," Pan Nan's mother said several days ago, looking out over the last of her four paddy fields that had not yet been sold to cover bills.

We need to give her back that control. Pan Nan's village neighbours, who are also struggling against the doubling of prices for food, petrol and fertiliser, help out her mother by giving her noodles or hiring her to help with their harvests.

If a weakened village community can do it, why can't a national government?

Anupama Rao Singh is Regional Director of Unicef East Asia and the Pacific.