World’s most vulnerable childr

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

World’s most vulnerable children suffer even more during pandemic

The poorest children have disproportionately lost access to education, healthcare and food during the COVID-19 crisis, warn NGOs.

World’s most vulnerable childr

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

School closures and the economic downturn as a result of pandemic are taking the biggest toll on the world’s most marginalised children. 

The organisation Save the Children released the largest global COVID-19 survey of its kind as part of the ‘Protect a Generation’ report on Wednesday, 11 September.

This revealed that the poorest children have been most at risk during the crisis and have disproportionately lost access to education, healthcare and food.

Those in crisis are already very vulnerable

According to Global Citizen, an international non-profit that aims to end extreme poverty by 2030, there is cause for concern as the children in crisis are some of the world’s most vulnerable.

In its own report summarising the Save the Children study, it points out that these youngsters already lack access to the tools and resources they need to escape poverty and reach their full potential.

In its survey, Save the Children asked 25,000 children and adults how the pandemic is affecting their lives and highlighted the ways the crisis has widened gender and wealth inequalities.

Response efforts must prioritise children’s needs

The organisation now wants to see more response efforts that prioritise children’s needs.

“To protect an entire generation of children from losing out on a healthy and stable future, the world needs to urgently step up with debt relief for low-income countries and fragile states so they can invest in the lives of their children,” Janti Soeripto, Save the Children President and CEO, said.

“The needs of children and their opinions need to be at the centre of any plans to build back what the world has lost over the past months, to ensure that they will not pay the heaviest price.”

Girls are particularly at risk, survey finds

Save the Children estimates that 9.7-million children will not be going back to school this year and the new survey suggests many of the children missing out are girls living in poverty.

Less than 1% of the children from poorer households who participated in the survey had access to remote learning, and of those who didn’t classify themselves as poor, only 19% had access.

Of the girls surveyed, 63% reported having more responsibilities compared to 43% of boys. The girls reported that chores got in the way of learning at over double the rate of boys — 23% compared to 10%. Caring for siblings fell on 52% of the girls surveyed compared to 42% of boys.

Child safety threatened by school closures

School closures have also threatened child safety. Since schools shut down, violence at home doubled and reached 17%, compared to 8% before. Violence increased almost three times more in children’s homes where parents lost income.

The majority of children surveyed now face new challenges to education: two-thirds of children reported that they had no contact with teachers during lockdowns.

In East and Southern Africa, for example, eight out of 10 children reported that they barely learned or didn’t learn at all during the pandemic.