Child rights during covid
If not everything, yet many things have changed in our lives, from using mask to social distancing to keeping hygiene. But think of people from lower socio-economic background. Is life has changed in same way for all? Absolutely not, because coronavirus pandemic has broaden the socio-economic chasm among people.
Rich may bear loses and they can still manage but poor have lost their sources of livelihood during Covid lockdown. Today, the biggest question in their life is about two-time meal, not about mask, social distancing or hygiene. They may be urban poor or rural, all they need is bread and butter. Who is providing for their basis needs?
Child rights: Rising fatality rate
The pandemic has brought worst impact on children specially among vulnerable communities, with taking child rights, health and security at risk. In a recent report UNICEF quoted Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to explain impact of pandemic on children. Over 880,000 children are likely to die over the next 12 months due to food crisis and scarcity of child health activities across the world, UNICEF said.
A large number of children will face malnutrition this year, said UNICEF. If talk about India, 37.9% children in the country are stunted, and 20.8% are wasted, i.e. becoming too thin for their height, says the Global Nutrition Report 2020. India’s condition is far worse than other developing countries, where the average rate of stunting is at 25%, and wasting at8.9%, it said.
An additional 6.7 million children under the age of five may be wasted this year worldwide, said UNICEF recently. India already has 20 million children, under five, suffering from wasting, said UNICEF. The global child health body also said, even before coronavirus outbreak, around 47 million children were already wasted in 2019.
Alarming wasting children numbers
UNICEF has alarmed the world for the need of a quick action in response to increasing malnutrition. Without quick action, total number of children suffering from wasting could reach near 54 million in a year, it alerted. This level would be highest mark in the millennium, with 80% wasting to be from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Both continents may each share around a half of the total number of wasting. Moreover, an additional 1.2 million children under five may die in next six months in low and middle income countries. This may happen due to unavailability of routine health services and increasing malnutrition across the world. Of this total, around 3 lakh children would be from India, said a recent UNICEF report.
In the view of millions of migrant labourers losing livelihood, we can imagine how dangerous can be the picture over the next few months in the country. In the absence of livelihood sources, a large number of vulnerable families are pushing their children into child labour to earn food for households. Cases of child trafficking and child marriages are also on boom in the country.
Child rights during covid: Abuse and violence
Apart from child health issues, child security has become another major concern in the country and rest of the world. Risk of violence against child, their exploitation and abuse has increased due to disruption in violence prevention and response services across the globe in times of coronavirus pandemic, said a UNICEF report.
Recently, UNICEF shared Socio-economic Impact Survey of COVID-19 Response from as many as 136 countries. Of which 104 reported to be facing disruption of services to deal with violence against children. Reports of highest rate of disruption of services against violence came from South Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries.
The survey aims at understanding how much damage done to children when they were more exposed to violence during Covid lockdowns. Due to the ongoing school closures and movement restrictions, children remained with more stressed abusers. Children had no option for help as protection services and social work disrupted during pandemic, said UNICEF.
Conclusion
In such a scenario, one can imagine how difficult is going to be the time for the vulnerable communities. They have to suffer even if we get rid of Covid pandemic in some time. The socio-economic impact on population of the world is going to be so deadly that its mitigation may take years and decades. Children are suffering from the worst physical and mental health complications in these trying times.
