CHILDHOOD ENDS FAR TOO SOON FOR FAR TOO MANY – WE MUST STOP THIS

Childhood enders. It’s a shocking concept. But what else could you call something that so profoundly disrupts the normalcy of growing up? Going to work will end a childhood. Getting married will end a childhood. Seeing your home brutally burnt down and fleeing in terror into uncertain circumstances, alone, will end a childhood. Today, 1.2 billion children are at risk of having their childhood end abruptly simply because of who they are and where they are born.  These children are subject either to extreme poverty, to conflict and violence or to systemic gender discrimination.  And 153 million children live in countries afflicted by all three.

In November on a visit to the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, I met Asha* in a Save the Children health clinic.  Seventeen, having walked eight days from her burned out village in North Rakhine State, her one-year-old child on her hip, Asha is that statistic. A child mother, fleeing horrific violence, with no education and with no prospect but abject poverty.  Looking at Asha, you see courage and determination, you see worldliness and distrust, you see fear and confusion at a world turned on its head. But you see no trace of childhood.

When I read Save the Children’s new report, ‘End of Childhood’, I feel a sense of urgency to act faster. In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were established and every country in the UN has made a commitment to reach them by 2030. At this rate, we will miss the mark. What this research tells us is that, while progress is being made, it’s not enough. 95 countries have succeeded in improving conditions that support healthy childhoods, but for a disheartening 58 countries, conditions worsened. And worse, when we take into consideration the growth rate of the population, even if the ratios of some indicators are improving, the actual number of children at risk keeps growing. We need to make the needle move in the right direction significantly faster.

In the last twenty-five years we have vastly improved the life prospects of children in the world – halved the child mortality rate of the poorest, reduced the number of children who do not receive primary education by 40%, eradicated diseases. And yet, more than half of the world’s children still start their lives with the odds stacked against them. This report is a call on governments, on duty bearers around the world.  Through education, through changing social norms, through enforcing the basic rights of young people to a childhood free of war, free of work, free of sexual exploitation, we can make ‘childhood enders’ rare and make triple jeopardy survivors like Asha a thing of the past.

*name has been change

Bill Chambers is CEO of Save the Children Canada, based in Toronto.