RIGHTS-EASTERN EUROPE: Grim Future for Children, Unicef Warns

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Linus Atarah

HELSINKI, Apr 27 1999 (IPS) - Unless drastic measures are urgently adopted, the Kosovo refugee crisis will look pale compared to the plight of children in the former socialist countries of eastern and central Europe, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) warned here Tuesday.

The sharp deterioration of standards of living, health care, education and other public services in the former socialist bloc is attributed by a Unicef report – “Generation in Jeopardy” – to the transition from state socialism to free-market economies without paying due attention to the most vulnerable.

The report paints a gloomy picture of children in the region, largely caused by collapsing economies and civil wars.

“If national governments with newly emerging civil societies do not – in a serious manner and with very well targeted assistance from the international community – do something about it, we could witness an explosive social crisis that will threaten Europe,” Alexandre Zouev, the report’s editor, said at a news conference.

Zouev, a senior programme officer with Unicef in New York, described the situation of children in the central-eastern European region as one of the most challenging social, economic and humanitarian crisis in the history of Europe since World War II.

“Generation in Jeopardy’ describes with facts, figures and photographs how economic and social upheaval in the painful move from communism towards democracy and market-economies have wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of children and young people.

There are more than 100 million children in different parts of eastern and central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Their well-being and human rights are now in serious jeopardy because of a number of factors such as civil conflicts, rapidly deteriorating social infrastructure, and shrinking social budgets, the report says.

Even though such tragedies faced by children “have not caught the attention of CNN and other mass media, it doesn’t make the situation less painful than the civil conflicts that they often report,” said Zouev.

Decreasing public expenditures in social programmes, increasing mortality rates and decreasing life expectancy as well as a sharp rise in youth delinquency and child abuse across the entire region from Tajikistan to Bosnia and from Russia to Albania are the trademark of the transition, he said.

The report shows that children’s health in the region is rapidly deteriorating due to infectious diseases such as HIV, family violence and pollution. In Russia alone, more than 12 million children live in cities where pollution level are five times higher than internationally accepted standards of tolerance.

Much of the water being piped to households in eastern Europe is polluted with nitrates, arsenic, pesticides, viruses and bacteria, the report adds.

There is also an increasing number of HIV cases due to a growing use of intravenous drugs, and yet there is no public campaign to educate young people on the adverse effects of these dangerous habits, the report points out.

But the social exclusion is not confined to children alone, said John Donahue, a Unicef senior programme officer and a specialist on the region.

He said that six million women in the region are registered as unemployed, with young women in particular having difficulties finding jobs. Combined with skyrocketing food prices, the upshot is that infant mortality is increasing dramatically, up to six times higher than neighbouring Finland.

The fundamental right of access to appropriate education is not also met for children in the region, said Donahue. A study conducted by Unicef’s Child Development Centre in Florida (United States), revealed that there were almost two million children in public institutions in the region in 1997.

Two years ago a study by the same organisation revealed that there was 1.6 million fewer children in school than they were in 1989. Between five and ten percent of those in school-going age are not enrolled in school, while tens of thousands others are enrolled but do not attend regularly.

The underlying grounds are many and complex, Zouev said, but he quickly identified the primary causes as stemming from an economic reform process which did not pay adequate attention to social and human aspects.

“All emphasis was placed on fiscal and financial reforms while entirely neglecting the human dimension. There was just no social safety net,” he said.

“We have to recognise that the old system left behind both good and bad legacies. Access to social services was almost universal in the former socialist countries, but it was cost ineffective and placed enormous strain on national budget,” he said

Present at the launching ceremony was former chess champion and Unicef’s Good Will ambassador Anatoly Karpov, from Russia. “Very often while trying to achieve certain political goals, we keep forgetting what we are fighting for,” he said.

“I deeply believe that human development and well-being should be the final goals of any planned change and any transition should have a human face,” said the seven times chess world champion who is a major donor of aid to charity organisations in Russia.

Finland’s Interior minister Jan Erik Enestam described the situation in the eastern European countries as a “virtually delineated epidemic fault line.” The eastern border of Finland marks the biggest difference in standard of living anywhere in the world, he said.

“While life expectancy for men in Finland is 73, in Russia it is less than 57 years. Infant mortality is six times higher in Russian than in Finland. Tuberculosis and other epidemics, often referred to as ‘disease of poverty’ and which are shown in the report as a common affliction of children in the region are considered conquered in Finland,” Enestam stressed.

However, Zouev ended the event on lighter-hearted note by referring to a joke in the former Soviet Union that used to define a pessimist as “a born optimist but very well informed.”

That is why even though the situation of children depicted in the book might appear too gloomy, the editors chose the title ‘Generation in Jeopardy’ instead of ‘Lost Generation.’

A number of countries have made significant strides to stem the situation, he said. “As we have documented in the book, there a number of success stories in the book where governments in the region and society as whole have made significant gains in attempts to save their children but I wish the list was much longer,” Zouev said.