Poverty In Africa

DEVELOPMENT

About the goals UNICEF's role What UNICEF is doing © UNICEF/HQ98-0891/Pirozzi
Goal: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Targets by 2015:
Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.

Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.


Reducing poverty starts with children.

More than 30 per cent of children in developing countries – about 600 million – live on less than US $1 a day.

Every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5.

Poverty hits children hardest. While a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human, it is most threatening to children’s rights: survival, health and nutrition, education, participation, and protection from harm and exploitation. It creates an environment that is damaging to children’s development in every way – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.

One than 1 billion children are severely deprived of at least one of the essential goods and services they require to survive, grow and develop. Some regions of the world have more dire situations than others, but even within one country there can be broad disparities – between city and rural children, for example, or between boys and girls. An influx or tourism in one area may improve a country’s poverty statistics overall, while the majority remains poor and disenfranchised.

Each deprivation heightens the effect of the others. So when two or more coincide, the effects on children can be catastrophic. For example, women who must walk long distances to fetch household water may not be able to fully attend to their children, which may affect their health and development. And children who themselves must walk long distances to fetch water have less time to attend school – a problem that particularly affects girls. Children who are not immunized or who are malnourished are much more susceptible to the diseases that are spread through poor sanitation. Poverty exacerbates the effects of HIV/AIDS and armed conflict. It entrenches social, economic and gender disparities and undermines protective family environments.

Poverty contributes to malnutrition, which in turn is a contributing factor in over half of the under-five deaths in developing countries. Some 300 million children go to bed hungry every day. Of these only eight per cent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 per cent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.

The best start in life is critical in a child’s first few years, not only to survival but to her or his physical, intellectual and emotional development. So these deprivations greatly hamper children’s ability to achieve their full potential, contributing to a society’s cycle of endless poverty and hunger.

See map: Childhood is under threat from poverty

Fulfilling children’s rights breaks that cycle. Providing them with basic education, health care, nutrition and protection produces results of many times greater magnitude than these cost-effective interventions. Their chances of survival and of a productive future are greatly increased – as are the chances of a truly fair and peaceful global society.

UNICEF responds by:

Building national capacities for primary health care. Around 270 million children, just over 14 per cent of all children in developing countries, have no access to health care services. Yet improving the health of children is one responsibility among many in the fight against poverty. Healthy children become healthy adults: people who create better lives for themselves, their communities and their countries. Working in this area also helps to further Goal 4 – to improve child survival rates.

Helping the world's children survive and flourish is a core UNICEF activity, and immunization is central to that. A global leader in vaccine supply, UNICEF purchases and helps distribute vaccines to over 40 per cent of children in developing countries. Immunization programs usually include other cost-effective health initiatives, like micronutrient supplementation to fight disabling malnutrition and insecticide-treated bed nets to fight malaria.

Along with governments and non-governmental organizations at national and community levels, UNICEF works to strengthen local health systems and improve at-home care for children, including oral re-hydration to save the lives of infants with severe diarrhoea and promoting and protecting breastfeeding.

Getting girls to school. Some 13 per cent of children ages 7 to 18 years in developing countries have never attended school. This rate is 32 per cent among girls in sub-Saharan Africa (27 per cent of boys) and 33 per cent of rural children in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet an education is perhaps a child’s strongest barrier against poverty, especially for girls. Educated girls are likely to marry later and have healthier children. They are more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, better able to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and more able to participate in decision-making at all levels. Additionally, this UNICEF activity furthers Goals 2 and 3: universal primary education and gender equality.

To that end, UNICEF works in 158 countries, calling on development agencies, governments, donors and communities to step up efforts on behalf of education for all children, and then coordinating those efforts. Programmes differ from country to country according to needs and cultures, but may include help with funding, logistics, information technology, school water and sanitation, and a child- and gender-friendly curriculum.

Supporting good nutrition. UNICEF seeks to help stem the worst effects of malnutrition by funding and helping countries supply micronutrients like iron and vitamin A, which is essential for a healthy immune system, during vaccination campaigns or through fortified food. UNICEF, governments, salt producers and private sector organizations are also working to eliminate iodine deficiency, the biggest primary cause of preventable mental retardation and brain damage, through the Universal Salt Iodization (USI) education campaign. UNICEF also works through communities to talk with child caregivers about how to provide sound nutrition for children, particularly via breastfeeding.

In emergency situations, UNICEF assesses the nutritional and health needs of affected people, protects and supports breastfeeding by providing safe havens for pregnant and lactating women, provides essential micronutrients, supports therapeutic feeding centres for severely malnourished children, and provides food for orphans.

Assisting in water and sanitation improvement. One in three children in the developing world – more than 500 million children – has no access at all to sanitation facilities. And some 400 million children, one in five, have no access to safe water. Meanwhile, unsafe water and sanitation cause about 4,000 child deaths per day. Through advocacy, funding and technical assistance, UNICEF works in more than 90 countries around the world to improve water supplies and sanitation facilities in schools and communities and to improve and promote safe hygiene practices.