25th anniversary of
the Convention of the Rights of the Child, The State of the World’s On the 25 Children
report lays out an agenda for change
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Ajay Shastri (Editor)
BOLLYWOOD CINE REPORTER
Email: editorbcr@gmail.com
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BCR (AFAQ KHAN SAMEER/NEW DELHI) Urgent action is needed to prevent millions of children
from NEW DELHI, 21 November 2014 – 25th
missing out on the benefits of innovation,
UNICEF said in a new report launched on the 25th Anniversary of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child. Connectivity and collaboration can fuel new global
networks to leverage innovation to reach every child, according to the
children’s agency.
The State of the World’s Children Report – Reimagine the
future: Innovation for every child calls on governments, development
professionals, businesses, activists and communities to work on governments,
development professionals, businesses, activists and communities to work together
to drive new ideas for tackling some of the most pressing problems facing
children – and to find new ways of scaling up the best and most promising local
innovations.
to find new ways of scaling up the best and most promising
local innovations.
The report is a crowd-sourced compilation of cutting-edge
innovations and an interactive platform that maps innovations in countries all
over the world and invites innovators to put their own ideas ‘on the map’.
“Inequity is as old as humanity, but so is innovation –
and it has always driven humanity’s progress,” said UNICEF Executive Director
Anthony Lake. “In our ever-more
connected world, local solutions can have global impact – benefiting children
in every country who still face inequity and injustice every day.
“For innovation to benefit every child, we have to be more
innovative – rethinking the way we foster and fuel new ideas to solve our
oldest problems,” said Lake. “The best
solutions to our toughest challenges won’t come exclusively either from the top
down or the grassroots up, or from one group of nations to another. They will
come from new problem solving networks and communities of innovation that cross
borders and cross sectors to reach the hardest to reach – and they will come
from young people, adolescents and children themselves.”
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention
on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Since then, there has been tremendous
progress in advancing child rights – with a huge reduction in the numbers of
children dying before the age of five and increased access to education and clean
water.
However, the rights of millions of children are violated
every day, with the poorest 20 percent of the world’s children twice as likely
as the richest 20 percent to die before their fifth birthday, almost one in
four children in the least developed countries engaged in child labor, and
millions of children regularly experiencing discrimination, physical and sexual
violence, and abuse and neglect.
The latest edition of UNICEF’s flagship report argues that
innovations such as oral rehydration salts or ready-to-use therapeutic foods
have helped drive radical change in the lives of millions of children in the
last 25 years – and that more innovative products, processes, and partnerships
are critical to realizing the rights of the hardest to reach children. The
fully digital report includes multimedia and interactive content that invites
readers to share their own ideas and innovations, and highlights outstanding
innovations that are already improving lives in countries around the world from
a wide range of countries, including:
Solar Ear, the world’s first rechargeable hearing aid
battery charger, developed to meet the needs of communities lacking regular
access to electricity; it can be charged via the sun, household light, or a
cell phone plug. (Tendekayi Katsiga, Deaftronics, Botswana / Zimbabwe)
Community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM), a
model of care that moves away from the traditional, expensive, low-coverage
model of inpatient therapeutic feeding centres run by aid agencies, treats
people in their homes with the support of local clinics and using ready-to-use
therapeutic foods. (Steve Collins, co-Founder and Director of VALID Nutrition)
New ways to engage Liberian youth in the midst of the
Ebola crisis through U-report, a mobile phone-based system developed with young
people, that helps examine what issues are most important to them. (UNICEF,
Liberia)
Floating schools that provide year-round access to
education for children living in flood- prone regions of Bangladesh. (Mohammed
Rezwan, Founding Executive Director of the NGO Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha).
Vibrasor, a device invented by two teenage girls in
Colombia, to help people with hearing impairments navigate safely through busy
urban areas. (Isamar Cartagena, Katherine Fernandez).
To find a new solution to help those without regular
access to electricity in Nigeria, four teenage girls invented a urine-powered
generator. (Nigeria).
Group Handwashing Stations under Swachh Bharat, Swachh
Vidyalaya campaign in India.
The path breaking innovation has the potential of
improving the education and health outcomes of 110 million children who have
Mid-Day meals daily in school, across the country. (please see India fact sheet
for further details).
“There are so many young inventors all cross the globe –
even in the remotest corners – who are committed to changing the world for
children,” says Bisman Deu, a 16-year old from Chandigarh, India whose
invention of a building material made from rice waste is featured in UNICEF’s
report. “Every nation has different problems and every person has different
solutions,” said Deu. “We need to learn
from one another’s experiences, come together as a global community of
innovation and keep producing ideas that can make a real difference.”
UNICEF has prioritized innovation across its network
of more than 190 countries, setting up hubs around the world including in
Afghanistan, Chile, Kosovo, Uganda, and Zambia to foster new ways of thinking,
working and collaborating with partners and to nurture local talent.
