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 | 21-11-2024

International Children's Day: Child suitability at risk 

Two thirds of the global sustainability goals relevant to children are at risk of not being achieved by 2030

 

By Alexandra Namyslowski

 

International Children's Day is a public holiday celebrated in over 145 countries around the world to raise awareness of the special needs of children and their rights. In socialist countries, Children's Day was called a "day of struggle for the happy and peaceful future of all children." And as things currently stand, we will have to fight hard for this future, because two thirds of the global sustainability goals relevant to children are not on track to be achieved by 2030, according to a UNICEF report. “Seven years ago, the world pledged to eradicate poverty, hunger, and inequality, and to ensure that everyone – especially children – has access to quality basic services. (...) The consequences of not meeting the goals will be measured in children’s lives and the sustainability of our planet. We must get back on track, and that starts with putting children at the forefront of accelerated action to reach the SDGs.” said Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF.  

 

A child born in Germany has a 25 times higher chance of survival than a child in sub-Saharan Africa

To enable growing generations to live a good life, it is important to ensure that they can provide themselves with water, food, sanitation and housing facilities, medicine, that their rights to sexual self-determination are protected and that they have access to education. Wars are contributing to the dramatic deterioration of the status of these areas. In addition, it must be ensured that climate enables a good life. It is precisely the populations of the countries that suffer most from climate change caused by industrialized nations that are least responsible for it.

According to UNICEF estimates, around 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday in 2022: that is 13,400 children per day, 560 children per hour, nine children per minute – mostly for avoidable reasons. This corresponds to the almost four million children under the age of five who lived in Germany in 2022, according to the Federal Statistical Office. It would therefore be comparable to the deaths of all children under the age of 5 in Germany in that year.
In addition, around 2.1 million children and young people between the ages of five and 24 die every year. These figures come from the United Nations' annual report on child mortality, which is based on the latest available data; the current report covers 2022. These are estimates that must be treated with some caution because there are no accurate current statistics or surveys in many countries. UNICEF is leading this report together with experts from the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank Group and the United Nations Population Division. A child born in Germany has a 25 times higher chance of survival than a child in these countries: Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Chad, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Mali. 

 

What to do?

These countries are far away. What can we do there? The good news: A lot can be achieved with relatively little effort. Because how children are doing – here and in other parts of the world – is very much in our hands. We have 4 levers for this:

Vote  

Which parties with which programs will we vote for in the upcoming European elections? Do we give our vote to parties that incoherently propagate "Germany first" and systematically disadvantage people who were simply "unlucky" to be born in other countries or who campaign for fairness, climate justice and child suitability? We have never had as much choice as we do now and at the same time it has never been so clear what is worth campaigning for. And one thing in advance: If more sustainable parties come to the decision through an election, everyone will find it easier to make the next lever "conscious consumption". More sustainable parties are more concerned with removing environmentally harmful products from circulation or at least enforcing labelling requirements.

Consume consciously

Convenience has its price, which we as a society can no longer afford. Yes, it can be tedious
- checking how “green” the electricity/gas from the energy supplier really is
- turning over food packaging and reading whether it contains ingredients that are harmful to animals and humans during their production/cultivation (e. g. palm oil)
- avoiding products that are packaged in plastic or are made of plastic
- looking for a garment second hand instead of buying it online
- avoiding (industrially produced) meat
- looking for alternative products because your favorite product is made by a company that has made negative environmental or human rights violation headlines

But it can also be fun to be rigorous. Once you have questioned and changed your basic consumer behavior, many products are no longer up for debate. It is easier and much quicker to buy. And in the long term, the reduced demand also sends an important signal to companies: Thanks, that's enough.

Managing companies in a way that is suitable for children

What products companies produce and how, what services they offer to whom, where they get their energy from, how they shape the company's own mobility behavior – all of this is in the hands of people. And the people in companies have a responsibility for how this is done – especially towards children. Here, every company should ask itself whether it is contributing to sustainable development in the sense of the Brundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development) of 1987: "Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Give our children less of more and more of less

Childcare in Germany – as in other wealthy industrial nations – is accompanied by an oversupply materially, but also in terms of calories. This surplus is carried on the backs of those children who were unlucky enough to have been born in less wealthy countries. According to Ernst Böckler, State Advisory Board of the Federal Association for the Environment and Nature Conservation, a birth in Europe causes 160 times more environmental damage than one in Ethiopia. The average CO₂ footprint of a European or North American is two hundred times greater than that of an Ethiopian and twelve times greater than that of an Indian (Sarah Diehl, Die Uhr, die nicht tickt, S. 95).   

Against this background, we should overload our children LESS with products and calories and convey to them MORE that it is pure luck where you were born and that this privilege obliges you to treat people and environmental resources sustainably.