By Safaa Abdoun
CAIRO: The current surge in urban growth is creating a harsh environment for children all over the world, according to a UNICEF report.
Forty-three percent – 35.2 million – of Egypt’s population lives in urban areas, but as families move to cities in search of better opportunities, services are struggling to keep up with the urban growth.
In its annual publication, “The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World,” UNICEF says that almost half the world’s children now live in urban areas, calling for greater emphasis on identifying and meeting their needs.
“We’re approaching some sort of tipping point. Already more than half the world’s people live in cities and towns and so do more than a billion children. The day is rapidly approaching when the majority of the world’s children will be growing up in urban environments,” said report editor Abid Aslam.
As part of the urbanization process, children are growing up in slums where they are forced to endure violence, exploitation and lack of basics such as clean water and education.
Children in these areas are also likely not to have been registered at birth and their families may lack a formal rental agreement or other such protection from arbitrary eviction, which makes their lives extremely precarious, stated the report.
“They don’t know often from one week to the next, or one month to the next, or one year to the next where they’re going to live, much less whether they’re going to be able to go to school, or whether they’re going to have clean, piped water,” said Aslam.
The report calls attention to the lack of data on conditions in slums, particularly as it relates to children, and it calls for a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding poverty and inequality in cities and increased political will to improve the lives of the most marginalized.
“One of the things that struck us all is the paucity of child-specific urban data,” said Aslam. “There are many technical reasons, but at the end of the day it’s a political decision and it serves certain interests to keep the problem under wraps, to keep these children invisible, and that’s something that needs to change,” he explained.
“When we think of poverty, the image that traditionally comes to mind is that of a child in a rural village,” said UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake. “But today, an increasing number of children living in slums and shantytowns are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in the world, deprived of the most basic services and denied the right to thrive.”
“Excluding these children in slums not only robs them of the chance to reach their full potential; it robs their societies of the economic benefits of having a well-educated, healthy urban population,” Lake added.
Mortality Rate
In Egypt, the under-five mortality rate indicates that there are 28.1 deaths every 1000 live births. According to the UNICEF report, wealth increases the odds of survival for children under five in urban areas.
Nearly 8 million children died in 2010 before reaching the age of 5 – most from pneumonia, diarrhea or birth complications. In urban areas, high concentrations of poverty combine with inadequate services to drive up child mortality.
When it comes to education, in developing countries, more than 200 million children under 5 years of age fail to reach their full cognitive potential, according to UNICEF.
“Urban inequalities undermine children’s right to education,” said the report, explaining that in urban areas blighted by poverty, ill health and poor nutrition, early childhood programming is often notable by its absence.
UNICEF urges governments to put children at the heart of urban planning and to extend and improve services for all. More accurate data is needed to help identify disparities among children in urban areas and how to bridge them. The shortage of such data is evidence of the neglect of these issues.
UNICEF also calls on the help of community-based action.
The report calls for recognition of community-based efforts to tackle urban poverty and gives examples of effective partnerships with the urban poor, including children and adolescents.
