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DEVELOPMENT: Making Children the Sixth Pillar of Islam
By Martin Schuijt
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 (IPS) - The Islamic world, which encompasses nations as diverse in wealth and culture as Niger and Saudi Arabia, has some of the highest child mortality rates in the world, says a new report that calls on Islamic states to make children the focal point for greater unity and solidarity.
Titled "Investing in the Children of the Islamic World", the report is a collaboration of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (ISESCO), the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the United Nations children's agency UNICEF.
The OIC is an inter-governmental organisation grouping 57 countries, while ISESCO aims to strengthen and promote cooperation among member states in the areas of education, science, culture and communication.
OIC member states account for 11 of the 16 countries with the highest child death rates in the world, the report says, while some 4.3 million children under five in OIC countries die each year from preventable disease and malnutrition, most before their first birthdays.
The statistics in the report are not new, said Peter Crowley, director of the Office of Public Partnerships of UNICEF. What is new, he said, is the cooperation among the OIC member states, ISESCO and UNICEF to better the lives of 600 million children living in the Islamic world.
The OIC summit in October 2003 in Malaysia adopted a resolution on child protection that will be the focus of an important ministerial meeting in Rabat, Morocco next month. The meeting is expected to address a broad range of issues relating to children, such as combating HIV/AIDS and providing quality education.
An additional advantage of collaboration by these organisations, Crowley noted, is the opportunity to discuss how culture and religion can negatively affect children, such as female genital mutilation and child marriage.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar, who launched the report today, said that with a few exceptions, all three OIC sub-regions (Africa, Asia and the Middle East) have failed to make adequate progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The MDGs, whose target date is 2015, include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger, universal primary education, reduction of child mortality by two-thirds and cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters.
Albar urged OIC countries to "support the efforts to create an enabling environment by providing adequate resources so as to ensure that the children will enjoy their rights".
This is needed to "promote and protect the children and at the same time fulfill the commitments to the various international conventions and agreements", he said.
The situation in sub-Saharan Africa is especially worrisome, the report says. No progress has been made on child mortality in this region, and the rate has actually worsened in Cote d'Ivoire. Less than half of the OIC members are on track to meet the MDG on child mortality.
One key factor is a lack of access to treatments for major causes of child mortality, like acute respiratory infections, malaria and diarrhoea, which can easily be fought by investing in health care in the region.
Maternal mortality is another serious problem in OIC countries. In Afghanistan, one in every six pregnancies results in death. The average death rate of African OIC member-states is one in every 15 pregnancies - far higher than the global average of one in 74.
Education is another key issue in human development, especially in the Islamic countries, the report shows. Barely 60 percent of children in 17 OIC member states attend a primary school, while in others, more than half the adult population is illiterate.
According to the report, only 26 of the 57 OIC member states are on course to reach the MDG targets on primary education and gender equality.
Except for the Arab region, more than a third of the children in OIC countries live with persistent malnitrition. Almost half of all children under the age of five in Afghanistan, Yemen and Bangladesh are both underweight and stunted.
However, the report also highlights success stories such as Oman, where under-five child mortality fell from 280 per 1,000 live births in the 1960s to 12 per 1,000 in 2003.
"Much progress has been made, and one aim of the report is to enable members to share and learn from positive examples," said Dr. Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, director-general of ISESCO, in a statement.
"But much remains to be done to address high levels of maternal and child health, break the silence on HIV/AIDS and protect children from all forms of violence and exploitation."
The report urges Islamic states to form active inter-governmental partnerships, with a special role for the private sector in providing funding and technical expertise.
UNICEF executive director Ann Veneman said she was "extremely encouraged by the vision and leadership that has been shown by the OIC and ISESCO in mobilising Islamic countries to accelerate progress for children".
"Above all, we hope that the spirit of Islamic solidarity will result in ever greater collaboration, including technical and financial assistance among organisations of the Islamic countries, member states and Islamic philanthropic and financial institutions."
(END/2005)
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