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Thematic Overview
1980 –1989
Child Survival and Development
1946 –1959 UNICEF -
The Agency for Children
1960 –1979
The Development Decades
1990 –1999
Recognizing Children’s Rights
2000 –
Children and Millennium Development Goals
see also
UNICEF Milestones by Year
Child
Survival and Development Revolution
As the Third Development Decade dawned, countries of
the developing world were beginning to feel the chill of global
recession. It was clear, as UNICEF’s Executive Director James Grant
put it that “the central issue for much of the world’s population is
still life itself - that is, sheer survival. Human survival is,
after all, the necessary foundation for all other human
development”.
In December 1982, in his annual State of the World’s Children
report, Grant launched an initiative known as ‘the child survival
revolution’, whose scope later expanded to include child
development.
GOBI practices
With new vaccines and new possibilities of social mobilization,
UNICEF singled out four practices that collectively were referred to
as ‘GOBI’: ‘G’ for growth monitoring to keep a regular check on
child well-being; ‘O’ for oral rehydration therapy to treat bouts of
childhood diarrhoea - the biggest single killer of children; ‘B’ for
breastfeeding as the perfect nutritional start in life; and ‘I’ for
immunization against the six vaccine-preventable childhood killers:
tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio and
measles. One of the strengths of this prescription was that all the
techniques were low-cost. These child protection techniques, along
with female education, family spacing, food supplementation,
protection against Vitamin A and iodine deficiencies, and other
measures within the framework of basic services for children and
primary health care, formed a strategy for accelerating efforts for
child survival, health and development.
Universal child immunization
But the driving force behind the child survival revolution, was
immunization against key childhood diseases. A target of universal
child immunization (UCI) by 1990 had been set at the World Health
Assembly in 1977, but by the 1980s the average level of immunization
in most developing countries was still between 10 per cent and 20
per cent. A key conference in Bellagio, Italy, in March 1984 led to
the formation of the Task Force for Child Survival, which involved
not only UNICEF but also WHO, UNDP, the World Bank and the
Rockefeller Foundation. This group agreed that immunization should
be the priority not just for UNICEF’s GOBI campaign but for the
whole primary health care movement. The campaign thus became far
broader than UNICEF itself, as shown in the vivid phrase, ‘a grand
alliance for children’.
During the 1980s, scores of developing countries conducted an
all-out drive to reach a coverage rate of 75 per cent child
immunization or more. This international effort, described as
perhaps the greatest mobilization in peacetime history, succeeded in
spite of the major cutbacks in social services necessitated by the
economic recession and adjustment crisis. By the end of the decade,
the child survival and development revolution was estimated to have
saved the lives of 12 million children.
Adjustment with a human face
“Adjustment with a human face” published as a landmark study and
prime example of UNICEF’s knowledge-based advocacy, prompted global
debate on how to protect children and women from the adverse affects
of economic adjustment and reform. UNICEF concluded that poor
children were suffering the worst effects of the recession and made
two basic recommendations: that economic adjustment policies
recognize the need to preserve minimum levels of nutrition and
household income; and that countries place a safety net under child
health and basic education. UNICEF tried to show how low-cost CSDR
approaches needed to be accompanied by economic and social actions
to protect basic human needs and a country's human resource
potential while coping with the economic crisis. Existing
expenditures needed to be restructured towards low-cost
interventions with high-effectiveness impact, and other available
but often under-utilized resources also need mobilizing.
Gender development
UNICEF began to recognize that women had importance beyond their
biologically or socially determined maternal roles: Women were also
economic providers, organizers and leaders. Up to this point, the
development process had pushed women to the margins. This exclusion
from social and economic participation acted as a powerful brake on
development in general. Future progress would require that
investment be structured in favour of women: that development become
‘gendered’.
This shift in awareness had major implications for UNICEF. Its child
survival and development prescription did have two elements that
directly supported a women’s rights agenda: female education and
birth spacing. But for the much more important GOBI ingredients,
women were cast in an exclusively maternal role. Throughout the
1980s, therefore, UNICEF resisted becoming involved in the
mainstream of the women’s cause. Towards the end of the decade,
however, it recast its policy on women in development to include the
language and dynamic of women’s rights, with a special focus on
girls. The movement for women’s rights also coincided with
resurgence of interest in children’s rights.
Children in Especially
Difficult Circumstances
During the 1980’s, UNICEF recognized that many children were being
damaged by forces that went beyond poverty and under development.
They included child victims of mass violence and warfare, for whom
practical ways were sought for implementing the concept of children
as “zones” or “bridges” of peace so that help could be provided on
both sides of hostilities. They also included children with
disabilities and children suffering from exploitation – as workers
and labourers, or as objects of commercial sexual abuse. In the
mid-1980s, UNICEF coined a new term to cover all these categories of
childhood disadvantage – children in especially difficult
circumstances (CEDC).
UNICEF increased its participation in international efforts for
compliance with international humanitarian laws and the
establishment of norms for the protection and development of
children everywhere. This included the adoption and implementation
of a Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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