Unemployment Has Risen Sharply – UNICEF Report

By Sainey M.K. Marenah

The newly Launched and released UNICEF Flagship Report on the State of World Children’s Report 2011 has discloses that in just three years, confidence in the world economy has plummeted stated further that unemployment  risen sharply and real household incomes have fallen or stagnated .

“The world is home to 1.2 million individuals aged 10-19 years. These adolescents have lived most of their lives under millennium declaration, the unprecedented global compact that since 2000 has sought a better world for all.” The 2011 UNICEF report highlighted.

The report say many their number have benefited from the gains in child survival, education, access to safe water, and other areas of development that stands as concrete successes of the drive to meet Millennium development Goals, the Human development targets at the core of the declaration.

But now they have arrived at a pivotal moments in their lives- just as the world is facing a critical moment In this new millennium, the report further noted.

“This economic turmoil and uncertainty have raised the spectre of fiscal austerity; particularly in some industrialize economies, resulting in more stringent approach to social spending and overseas development. In developing countries, too, public finances has tightened, and social spending, including investments in Child- related area, has come under greater scrutiny.” The reports noted.

The further noted: “in this contrast, adolescent, and the conventional wisdom might dictate that most resources be devoted to children and young people in the first decade of their lives. After all, that is when they are most vulnerable to death, disease and under- nutrition; when the effects of unsafe water and poor sanitation pose the greatest threat to their lives; and when the absence of education, protection and care can have the most pernicious lifetime application.”

In contrast, the state of world Children report 2011 noted that adolescents are generally stronger and healthier than younger children; most have already benefited from basic education; and many are among the hardest and, potentially, most costly to reach with essential services and protection. It hardly seems judicious, in these fiscally straitened times, to focus greater attention on them.

The report revealed that: “investing in adolescents can accelerate the fight against poverty, inequity and gender discrimination. Adolescence is the pivotal decade when poverty and inequity often pass to the next generation as poor adolescents girls give birth to impoverished children. This is particularly true among adolescents with low levels of education. Almost half the world’s adolescents of the appropriate age do not attend secondary school. And when they do attend, many of them- particularly those from the poorest and marginalized household and communities – fail to complete their studies or else with insufficient skills, especially in those high level competencies required by the modern globalized economy.”

However the report noted that: “large cohort of unemployed youth which in 2009 stood at around 81 million worldwide. For those who are employed, decent work is scare: in 2010, young people aged 15- 24 formed around one quarter world working poor.”