Issue No. 602
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5 - 11 September 2002 Issue No. 602 FAO |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
The report in focus
The Situation of Egyptian Children and Women: A Rights- Based Approach is a UNICEF report that explains in detail the situation of many of the children we see every day: the kids who rub their grimy faces against your car window trying to sell you a box of tissues, the others who run mechanic shops and the children who toil in the fields. Those and the many others we do not see at all: the children hidden away in factories and workshops, in poor school rooms and in the shanty towns that lack basic services.
And all children who live in a less developed country suffer problems such as excessive pollution. The report highlights that Egyptian children are exposed to a wide range of environmental threats to their health including heavy and toxic metals such as lead and zinc from fumes and dust generated by metal industries, chemical food additives such as artificial colours and preservatives that are banned by many countries, carcinogenic and toxic organic compounds including pesticides and insecticides, dangerous exhaust fumes and increasing salt concentration in water resources.
The report does all this, however, while making it clear that in spite of the "challenges" that remain, there have been major achievements. Most importantly, maternal mortality rates have been cut by more than 50 per cent in the past decade, reaching the goal set by the World Summit for Children. Similarly, there has been a two-thirds reduction in infant and under-five mortality rates since the early 1980s, the fact that 97 per cent of young children now receive vaccinations against the six main immunisable diseases and enrolment levels are now over 90 per cent nationally.
The document only deals with women's issues in the context of topics such as maternal health: "The survival and good health of young children depends, first and foremost, on the survival and good health of their mothers."
The report highlights that the growth in child population "has already stopped, and the child population, if current fertility trends hold, will actually begin to decline in the middle of the current decade. The era of demographically driven investment in children's services is therefore over in Egypt, making it easier for the state to extend coverage of services to reach all children, and to invest in improving service quality."
Currently, however, Egypt enjoys the numerically largest generation of adolescents (persons between 10 and 19 years of age) -- 15 million persons, accounting for around one- fifth of the overall population, and one-half of the child population. (Fifty-six per cent of these suffer parasitic infections including E.coli)
And despite having to grapple with the ramifications of poverty (see chart), the report points out that the Egyptian government has made a strong political commitment to children's rights. Egypt is one of the first 20 countries worldwide to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, one of the initiator countries for the 1990 World Summit for Children, passed a Comprehensive Childhood Law in 1996 and incorporated a child component in the current five-year plan (1997-2002). Further, the Decade for the Protection of the Egyptian Child, launched by President Hosni Mubarak, was extended for a second term covering the period up to 2010.
But balancing the good news is the long list of what remains to be done. For example, protein-energy malnutrition (PEM), which weakens children's ability to resist infectious diseases and also affects children's mental and cognitive development, continues to affect a "significant proportion" of children in Egypt. Nationally, 19 per cent of under fives contend with "stunted" growth. Further, micronutrient deficiencies -- in particular iodine, iron and vitamin A -- continue to pose an "important threat" to children's health. Namely, iodine deficiency can lead to impaired mental and physical development, congenital anomalies and cretinism while high levels of vitamin A deficiency can lead to night blindness and impair the immune system. Iron deficiency -- anaemia -- is life-threatening in young children and moderate anaemia "in pre-school years, even if treated, permanently reduces coordination and balance, limits attention spans and shortens memory capacity". This is in a country where "almost one in three young Egyptian children are anaemic".
And despite high enrolment rates, the report concedes, "the only national study that assessed scholastic achievement suggested poor acquisition of basic literacy and numeracy with evident differences by region and socioeconomic status of the household, but with little difference by gender." Further, it was found that some four million children aged seven to 18 years were not enrolled in school during the 1996/97 school year, the reasons for which are mainly economic. "... School fees, reintroduced in Egypt in the late 1980s, and private tutoring combined with growing out-of-pocket costs for items such as school uniforms, needed stationary, daily allowance, non-ministry text books and school donations" are expenses that many families are unable to meet.
And then there are the children who do not attend school and either work or hit the streets. The report indicates that "underreporting is a particular problem in estimating the prevalence of child work. In the formal sector, employers may falsify records... [and] children working outside the formal sector... ;In domestic service or in casual labour in agriculture are very rarely registered or reported." The official numbers have the number of child labourers (6 to 14 years) at between 12 to 15 per cent (see Chart II). However, the nature of their work is probably as problematic as the fact that they do work. The report cites evidence gathered in 1991 that showed that children in the greater Cairo area worked "11 hours a day in workplaces that frequently lacked water and toilet facilities, did not have appropriate safety devices or protective clothing, and in which pollutants (dust, noise, fumes) were common". This, among other alarming reports cited, suggests that long working hours and hazardous working conditions have led to alarmingly high levels of workplace injuries. Lack of information was found to also be an impediment in the case of assessing the circumstances faced by street children but among the findings available in the report is that "occurrences of physical and sexual violence are frequent on the street". In a survey conducted in 2000, 86 per cent of street children from Cairo and Alexandria identified violence -- by peers or older children, by members of the surrounding community and by employers as a major problem they faced (see Chart III).
The situation of Egyptian children and women: A rights- based approach, does not stop at merely quantifying various aspects of the condition of children in Egypt. It does so within the framework of what children need and should have to satisfy their basic needs, namely, a right to life, the right to an identity, the right to parental care, the right to live in appropriate and humane living conditions and the right to skill acquisition and development of their potentials. Within this framework, the report tackles issues such as violence within the family, whether adolescents feel they are heard within the family and society's bias against disabled children. It also includes a list of suggested key policy priorities including malnutrition, improving child care, improving the quality of schooling and the promotion of integrating children with disabilities.
All in all, a comprehensive round up.
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