SACP - South Africa's Child Poverty

Almost two-thirds of children live below the poverty line of R965 per month. Not only are the country's children facing gross inequality, but unemployment and poverty means many households cannot financially support their young.

Inequalities in access to quality services and opportunities still run along racial with 41 percent of all black African children and 33 percent of this group across all ages living in the poorest 20 percent of households in the country.

Despite many children being eligible for a monthly child support grant of R360 researchers pointed out around 1.8 million are still not accessing the grant, many of whom are among the neediest young children. At R12 a day, the grant was in effect a very small amount and was not enough to cover a child’s most basic daily food needs.

http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/sa-children-hardest-hit-by-poverty-2092671

Ghana's children

Malnutrition is responsible for nearly all half of deaths of children under five worldwide and, along with poor diets, is the main driver of disease, the 2016 Global Nutrition Report said.

Ghana economy's is losing more than two billion dollars a year due to the impact of child malnutrition, which has driven up healthcare costs, strained the education system and hindered the productivity of the workforce, a study said. Malnutrition comes in many forms, such as poor child growth and development or vulnerability to infection among those who do not get enough food, which is known as undernutrition.

Undernutrition among children costs Ghana $2.6 billion per year - 6.4 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) - according to a study led by the African Union and backed by U.N. aid agencies and the African Development Bank. Stunted growth, which occurs when children miss out on vital nutrients in the womb and their first two years of life, is the biggest concern, said the Cost of Hunger in Africa (COHA) study, which has been carried out in 12 other African nations.

A third of adults in Ghana suffered from stunting as children, and that child mortality linked to undernutrition has reduced Ghana's workforce by seven percent.

"In northern Ghana, 30 percent of children under five are stunted or chronically malnourished," said WFP deputy regional director for West and Central Africa, Margot van der Velden. "This not only affects their growth but also their educational development and economic potential, and consequently the future of the country," she added in a statement.

South Africa's Child Poverty

Over three million children under the age of six in South Africa live in poverty. Children who live below the food poverty line are not getting enough food to get their 2‚000 calorie a day nutrition they need.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/05/12/Over-three-million-SA-children-live-in-poverty

South Africa's Progress

Eighteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is now judged to be one of the most unequal societies in the world and its 19 million children bear the brunt of the disconnect.

The Unicef report found that 1.4 million children live in homes that rely on often dirty streams for drinking water, 1.5 million have no flushing lavatories and 1.7 million live in shacks, with no proper bedding, cooking or washing facilities.

Four in 10 live in homes where no one is employed and, in cases of dire poverty, the figure rises to seven in 10.

A total of 330,000 children - and five million adults - are presently infected with HIV, and 40 per cent die from the pandemic annually.

Child support grants, introduced in 1997, now reach 10.3m children but another one million who are eligible do not yet receive them.

Angola's Stunted Children

Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest economy. Porsche dealerships and Armani shops cater to members of the elite under President Jose Eduardo dos Santo’s 35-year rule while two-thirds of the nation’s people live in slums or impoverished rural settlements, often without running water and electricity. Africa’s second-biggest crude oil producer has the world’s highest rate of child mortality under the age of 5: 167 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). That’s one in six.

Sub-Saharan Africa hosts all 12 countries where more than 10% of children die before their fifth birthday, according to UNICEF. Sierra Leone is second, followed by Chad, Somalia and Central African Republic (CAR). Nigeria, which has the region’s largest economy and population with about 170 million people, is ninth. Angola is by far the richest country among African countries with the highest child mortality, with gross national income per capita of $5,170 in 2013, according to the World Bank. Nigeria, which pumped 2.1 million barrels of oil a day in March compared with Angola’s 1.84 million, earned $2,710 per person two years ago. In Somalia income per person is just $150. The figures for Chad, Central African Republic and Sierra Leone are all less than a fifth of Angola’s wealth.

About 30% of children in the southwest African country are stunted because of malnutrition, according to a 2007 government survey. The figure may be higher now because there are fewer aid agencies. For about two-thirds of Angolans living on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank, funge is a staple often made from cassava roots that have few nutrients.

Malnutrition stunts growth and causes about half of child deaths under 5, according to Maria Futi Tati, head of nutrition at Angola’s Ministry of Health. “It is not due to lack of food,” Tati said. “The problem resides in poverty and lack of meal diversification. You can’t be healthy when you only eat rice and funge and a lot of families just have one meal a day

“Cassava is indeed next to nutritionally useless,” Stephen Foster, a doctor who runs a private hospital in Lubango. 

Fact of the Day

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says some two million children under five die each year in Central and West Africa over poor hygiene. The figure makes up almost a third of all deaths worldwide in that age range. Due to the large population growth in Africa, the number of children under five who die every year from preventable causes remains unchanged.

Fact of the Day

 About 30 million primary school-aged children in sub-Saharan Africa are not in class, partially because of conflict and poverty. The situation is especially dire in West and Central Africa, which has the largest proportion of children out of school of any region in the world.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/education/article/UN-30-million-African-kids-missing-primary-school-5558573.php

Child Slavery

'How can I live in this world?
Oh, what can I do?
It is so dark ahead of me.
Mother and father do not want us.
They sell us to thugs.'
The words of a child in South Africa, originally written as a poem in the Xhosa language

Every day millions of children in Africa are at risk of being exploited, resulting in slave-like working conditions. Their childhood is forever lost.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations (UN), Africa has the world’s largest child labor population, with the agriculture and mining sectors among the worst offenders. Poverty is cited as the primary reason for forced child labor in Africa. The problem is severe in sub-Saharan Africa where more than 40 percent of all children aged 5-14, about 48 million children, work for survival, according to the ILO. Child trafficking for the purpose of labor is common throughout the continent. Family members often exchange children for money, goods or gifts.

According to the UN, in expanding economies the demand for labor increases. Unable to cope with high production quotas, industries turn to exploitative child labor. “Children and teenagers enter the risk of being used as cheap labor,” a UN report states. “Most of these children are vulnerable due to poverty. They are unaware of their rights, overworked, can’t resist.” The report said these children are employed with low or no wages, poor living conditions, hazardous work environments, no healthcare and little to no education opportunities.

“Forced labor robs children of a childhood, which in turn negatively affects their ability to be constructive members of their communities for the rest of their lives,” explains Mark Hatfield, Africa Director of Baptist Global Response, a humanitarian aid and relief organization. “Forced child labor deals a mental blow to the individual child, taking away his ability to dream about a future outside of his present status.” Hatfield says. “Children forced to work before they reach a reasonable age limits their future capabilities by taking away their right to a basic education, which can be the springboard out of poverty. Child labor perpetuates the poverty cycle by keeping the child in a low income, subsistence-only status all their lives.”

In ‘Not for Sale’ David Batstone writes: “There are more slaves today than at any other point in human history. Our mission is to create a world where no one is for sale.”

This too is the mission of Socialist Banner - to end wage slavery - that will not come about by christian charity, but by only ending the capitalist system.

We however ask the exact same question as the article: “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

Malawi's Tobacco Child Labour

 Malawi has become one of the five largest tobacco producers in the world, largely due to low export tariffs, cheap labour and lack of regulations. Malawian tobacco is found in the blend of almost every best-selling cigarette brand available in Europe, Asia and the US. But few of the smokers who buy the end product know much about the conditions the tobacco they consume is produced under.

Malawi is one of the least developed nations in the world (ranking 153 out of 169 countries in the Human Development Index) with around half the population living below the poverty line of $1.25 a day and one of the highest numbers of child labourers in Africa – around 1.5 million.

With tobacco sales making up 70 percent of the country's income and a significant part of its industrial activity, it is sadly inevitable that many of these children (aged between five and 15) are being forced by economic necessity to work with their families in the tobacco fields, risking their health, safety, and future. There they are subjected to hazardous manual labour, physical strain, dangerous environments, and long hours; often charged with strenuous tasks such as clearing the land, building tobacco drying sheds, weeding and plucking raw tobacco.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and NGOs such as SOS Children, Plan International and others, when the children cut and bundle the tobacco leaves they are put at risk of absorbing toxic quantities of nicotine through their skin. Many suffer from a disease called green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning. Symptoms include severe headaches, abdominal cramps, muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, diarrhoea and vomiting, high blood pressure and fluctuations in heart rate. Some are even given the task of applying pesticides with their bare hands – chemicals when handled incorrectly can cause serious neurological problems.

It also affects their development and education - children working in the fields cannot be at school - and so their involvement in the industry inevitably perpetuates a cycle of exploitation, illiteracy, lack of opportunity and poverty that will one day force them back into the fields as adults.

The cigarette manufacturers all insist that they are firmly opposed to the use of children working in their supply chain and that in Malawi. But critics claim that these initiatives are little more than window dressing from a multi-billion dollar industry that ultimately benefits from the country's low production costs.

Over the past two years only 49 tobacco farm owners have been prosecuted in Malawi for using child labour. Most received a $34 fine.

They are masquerading around the issue," says Mathias Burton of Malawi's Economic and Legal Social Services Centre. "To ease their consciences, that's why they have this kind of stuff. To say they are fighting child labour. And when they sell their own products ... the profits that they make, what they give out in social responsibility to these organisations is nothing at all compared to what they make."

Botswana misery

Almost half of Botswana are born into abject poverty .

The report also says many children and infants in Botswana die of preventable diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia. The report observes that malnutrion levels are high among children under five. The UNICEF report also says the prevalence of  wasting, stunting and obesity were 12%, nine percent, 31% and 15% respectively.

Protecting the young from marriage

75 percent of girls get married before the age of 18 in Niger, a  country of 16 million. Early marriages result in early pregancies, which compromises the girls’ future as many do not go to school once they are of marriageable age. According to 2011 statistics from the Ministry of Public Health, teenagers make up 19 percent of women of reproductive age and contribute 14 percent to the total female fertility in this country. Medical sources indicate that 40 percent of young brides fall pregnant a few months after marriage. Less than 40 percent of teenagers go for antenatal care,

“For us Muslims, marriage holds an important place in our lives,” Aminatou Abdou, 53, a housewife in Niamey told IPS.  She married off her two daughters at the ages of 15 and 16. “It is unacceptable for Muslim daughters to have no husband after puberty.”

“There is misinterpretation of the religion. Islam advocates social wellbeing. This is why I am against prematurely marrying off a daughter because this has bad implications for her health,” Malam Issa Dogo, a religious preacher “Those who marry off their daughters early do so because of ignorance. Islam is a religion which is against lack of knowledge.” However, a draft law drawn up in 2002 setting the minimum age for marriage at 18 is still being opposed by religious associations.

According to Abdou Sani, an anthropology doctorate student at the University of Abidjan, people use religion as a false pretext. The real reasons for these early marriages are ignorance and poverty, he said. “In most cases, these young girls are married off to older people who are financially well-off or have a high social status.”

“Socio-cultural pressures, particularly the desire to have a child before the first marriage anniversary often forces the young girl to prove her fertility a few months after marriage,” Salissou Habou, a sociologist in Niamey, Niger’s capital.

Because young girls fall pregnant before their bodies are mature, they are twice as likely to die during childbirth than women who over the age of 20. According to the Ministry of Public Health’s 2011 survey, the rate of maternal mortality in Niger is 554 deaths per 100,000 live births – among the highest in the world. Teenagers account for 13 percent of these deaths. Survivors often suffer from illnesses such as obstetric fistula.  In April 2013, out of 163 obstetric fistula victims counted in the country’s six healthcare centres, 80 percent were married before the age of 18.

“We must educate and keep young girls at school in order to put an end to this situation,” urged Hadiza Issoufou, a teacher and member of the Nigerien Association for the Defence of Human Rights.

Namibia child poverty

One in three children in Namibia still grows up in households that are poor.

 Long-term impacts on children, especially if poverty starts at an early age or persists over several years. These impacts include a higher risk of low birth weight and child mortality, stunting and poor educational outcomes. Poverty can also impact on children's emotional and psychosocial wellbeing as the daily struggle to make ends meet can increase stress and tension within a household.

The new slavery

If current trends continue the UN says there will still be about 190 million child labourers in eight years' time.  In the poorest parts of the world, the UN says, the numbers will rise: child labourers in sub-Saharan Africa will jump by around 15 million over the next decade, reaching 65 million by 2020.

 In Ethiopia almost 60% of children work. US chocolate companies had promised to educate all children in areas where it grew cocoa in west Africa – a commitment that would cost the industry $75m or 0.1% of annual sales. Instead it spent about $20m over eight years and reached just 4% of children in cocoa-growing communities in Ivory Coast and 30% in Ghana.

 Kevin Watkins, a former UN official who now works at the respected Washington-based thinktank the Brookings Institution, said: "The conditions of millions of child labourers would shock even the most hardened Victorian social reformers. National governments and international agencies are failing these kids, and reneging on their commitments."

poverty apartheid contines

South Africa's children still face apartheid-like inequality according to a new report. Sixty percent of children survive on less than 575 rand ($67, 51 euro), or around two thirds of black children 18 years and only two percent of white children.

Most of the poorest children live in rural areas, still locked into apartheid's geography of living in the poor former quasi-independent homelands that were set up for blacks by the racist white minority government.

"It looks just like a map of the old South Africa," said Katharine Hall, senior researcher at the University of Cape Town-based Children's Institute describing a map showing the geographical dispersal of the most deprived areas.

"Children who are born to poor parents and grow up in poor households are likely to remain poor, and in this way the inequalities of apartheid are reproduced," states the report.

south africa's shame

More than half of South Africa's children live in poverty and one in four has HIV.  South Africa is now judged to be one of the most unequal societies in the world and its 19 million children bear the brunt of the disconnect.

The Unicef report found that 1.4 million children live in homes that rely on often dirty streams for drinking water, 1.5 million have no flushing lavatories and 1.7 million live in shacks, with no proper bedding, cooking or washing facilities.

Four in 10 live in homes where no one is employed and, in cases of dire poverty, the figure rises to seven in 10.

Contrary to the rest of Africa, where pneumonia and diarrhoea are the biggest child killers, South African children are most likely to die from HIV/Aids. More than five million are currently infected with HIV, and 40 per cent die from the pandemic annually.

Aida Girma, Unicef's South African representative, said that two thirds of child deaths were preventable with simple improvements in primary care for children.

Rhoda Kadalie, executive director of Impumelelo Social Innovations Centre which seeks out novel ways to tackle poverty, said the problem could be traced back to 1994, when the post-apartheid, ANC government focused on "the economy, black economic empowerment and the consolidation of power" rather than education and health care.These subjects are not sexy and those ministries are given to the weaker ministers who have little political power," she said. "As a result, we are awash with policies but there's no political will or competence at a local level to implement them. The facts speak for themselves: if we don't invest in our children now, we might as well give up on our future."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9280481/More-than-half-of-South-Africas-children-live-in-poverty.html

Niger's shame

Niger is the worst country in the world in which to be a mother, according to a report by Save the Children. Save the Children has highlighted the vast differences between women's experience in Niger and the UK, with those in the former expecting having a one in 16 chance of dying from a pregnancy-related cause, against almost one in 5,000 in the UK.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/08/niger-worst-country-mother

Not profitting from farming

If growing up in an agricultural community were the key to health, the children of Kiamwangi would be thriving. While the farms grow fresh fruits and vegetables for export, health centers continue to treat diseases related to nutritional deficiency. Malnourishment causes stunting, a reduced growth rate. Data from the 2009 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey indicate that nationally, 35 percent of children under five are stunted, while 14 percent are severely stunted.

Jane Hunyu, who farms a quarter-acre plot here, says the children in her region are nearly as frail as their grandparents. "Children are malnourished," says Hunyu. "Recently, we are also seeing increasing cases of diabetes." She concludes that the children's families cannot afford the produce they harvest with their own hands. It's a dilemma facing millions of agricultural workers in Africa, and few know any other way of life. Hunyu also noticed that many small-scale farmers had started growing crop varieties like those produced by big commercial farms. "This required us to buy fertilizers, pesticides and other farm inputs to ensure a good harvest," says Hunyu, a mother of two. "But the crops started failing due to erratic rainfall and many farmers were left desperate."

Globally, a recent report from the Save the Children charity estimated that half a billion children could grow up physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years because of poor diet. Most of these children live in developing countries where key food groups such as meat, milk and vegetables are becoming increasingly unaffordable for the poor.

"Kenyans should start reaching out to traditional staple foods such as finger millet, because our studies show that they are richer in nutrients for both mothers and children," says Clement Kamau, a researcher with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. Researchers are rallying behind this shift for an important reason. They say that historically these varieties have been considered the 'poor man's crops' such as sorghum.


http://allafrica.com/stories/201203270004.html

Children Dying

13 children out of every 10,000 aged less than five die in the Somalia famine zone every day.

"This means that 10 per cent of children under five are dying every 11 weeks. These figures are truly heart wrenching," The UN representative to Somalia Augustine Mahiga told the UN Security Council.

"We have not yet seen the peak of the crisis as further deterioration is considered likely," Deputy UN emergency relief coordinator Catherine Bragg said.

Bragg said more than 1.2 Somali children are in dire need of assistance. She warned that tens of thousands of more children will die if aid is not provided.

The United States has estimated that more than 29,000 kids under the age of five have starved to death in southern Somalia in the past three months.

surviving childhood

A third of youngsters in Sierra Leone are underweight and another third have stunted growth. Poverty plays a big part.

In 2008, a demographic health survey suggested one in seven (140 per 1,000) died before the age of five.

Pneumonia and diarrhoea account for 40% of child deaths in Sierra Leone, vaccine-preventable infections.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13740128

SOUTH AFRICA'S SHAME

The Human Rights Commission's workshop on Equity in the Realisation of Children's Rights in South Africa revealed that 11,9million children live in poverty. It also revealed that a child growing up in deprived communities was two times less likely to have access to adequate sanitation and water, two times less likely to be exposed to early childhood development programmes, three times less likely to complete secondary education and 17 times more likely to experience hunger. African children are 12 times more likely to experience hunger than white children

About 1.7million children lived in shacks, 1.4million relied on rivers or streams as their main source of water, and 1.5million had no toilet in their home. "Most" causes of death of children under five were avoidable; and 61% of all child deaths were due to "health system failures" - inadequate care by doctors and nurses working at clinics and hospitals. One in five children is stunted by chronic malnutrition, and 100000 children who need antiretroviral drugs did not get them. Immunisation coverage across the country for killer diseases, including polio, hepatitis, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and tuberculosis, has decreased to as little as 45% in some areas compared to 1994.

In education, 582000 children of high school age were not at school - 28% of them because their parents could not afford school fees. Four out of 10 children live in households in which none of the adults work.

Of the 49million people living in South Africa, 18million of them were children under the age of 18 and more than 60 percent of them were African children living in hunger. Of 56500 children who were victims of violent crime in 2009-2010, 27417 were raped or molested. Of those, 29% were under the age of 10 years

Aida Girma, Unicef's representative in South Africa, said the situation was similar to that in other developing countries, where "millions of the world's most disadvantaged, vulnerable and marginalised children" are left behind.