DEVELOPMENT: Former Communist Nations No Paradise for Children

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Nov 29 2001 (IPS) - The former communist countries of Europe and Central Asia, in the rush for economic growth, have neglected their goals to improve the standard of living for all and to build humane and democratic societies, says a new report by the United Nations Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The UN specialised agency expressed this concern after studying the social impacts of 10 years of political, economic and social transition in Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Baltic countries.

The report, titled “A Decade of Transition”, covers the full scope of social progress achieved since 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, which has come to symbolise the collapse of the region’s communist regimes.

As far as household income, child poverty, health, education, demographic changes, and children in public care, the results of the 10-year period show a mix of success and failure, according to the document presented Thursday in Geneva.

“New freedoms have often gone hand in hand with new risks, such as growing poverty, with serious consequences for social development,” says the UN specialised agency.

But UNICEF’s executive director Carol Bellamy said that one of the report’s key messages is to reaffirm “the original ideas of transition: to raise the standard of living for everyone and to develop humane and democratic societies.”

The complexity of the process is reflected in the transformation of the eight original countries into today’s 27, most of which endured economic crisis in the 1990s, and a third of which have been torn by conflicts–that in some cases persist today.

The UNICEF report, published by its Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy, mentions that teen-age birth rates, maternal mortality and adolescent deaths are all on the decline.

Most of the region’s economies are in a phase of growth, but the study indicates that many people have not reaped the benefits of the progress achieved.

Bellamy said the total number of children in the region–108 million–is approximately 13 percent lower than in 1989. Furthermore, the portion of children under age five has fallen by more than a third.

This represents “a great opportunity, if grasped, to review services for children and maximize their impact,” said the UNICEF chief.

Nevertheless, the report shows that the countries in transition face the same obstacles for improving the lives of their children as do countries in most of the rest of the world.

Millions of children live in poverty, millions of adolescents drop out of school and a rising number of children are being left in the hands of the state as their families are pushed to the brink in their efforts to make ends meet.

The study underscores the growing disparities between the richer and poorer sections of region that includes four countries that are members of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a bloc of industrialised nations.

The region is also home to 10 countries that are applying for entry into the European Union, and to eight that the World Bank categorises as low-income countries.

Some 18 million children and adolescents in the region live in poverty, subsisting on less than 2.15 dollars a day, a threshold established by the World Bank. The majority of minors in Moldova, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are poor, based on that income measure.

In the health arena, the 1990s saw 3.2 million “excess” deaths in the region. According to the UN agency these deaths, mostly of adult males, would not have occurred if mortality rates remained at their 1989 levels.

Bellamy pointed out that high levels of childhood malnutrition have appeared in some parts of the region, and that there have been new outbreaks of tuberculosis, a disease that tends to thrive among impoverished populations.

The executive director, however, also highlighted the results of a survey conducted among young people in the region on their assessment of the first 10 years of the transition.

According to the poll, 43 percent of the respondents believe life today is better than it was a decade ago. Just 10 percent said they are pessimistic about the future, and the majority said they would prefer to remain in their own country, though 23 percent said they hope to emigrate.

Bellamy, of U.S. nationality, interprets these responses as reflecting the younger population’s pessimism about current problems, but optimism and openness in facing new challenges.

The UNICEF report warns the governments of the CIS, Eastern and Central Europe and the Baltics that future economic growth must be channelled to benefit their entire populations.

The decline in birth rates and in the number of minors “certainly leaves no excuse for inadequate investment in children.”

Bellamy stated that the countries of the region have to establish greater efficiency in the public sector and improve the effectiveness of its initiatives aimed at benefiting the poor.

Furthermore, family incomes require support through both economic policy and tax systems, says UNICEF.

The UN agency asserts that child poverty must be moved to centre-stage in the national policy debate of each country in the region.