Unsafe spaces: Editorial on the rise in crimes against children

 The health of a society can be gauged by the condition of its children. The National Crime Records Bureau report on crimes against children shows that in 2022 sexual crimes against children increased by 8.7% from 2021 and since 2014 by 81%. Like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the increase in West Bengal has been 5%. This is a shocking increase, apart from the fact that the rape of a child in itself is a shocking crime. The worst indicator is that the home is where most rapes take place, followed by childcare institutions and schools. Crimes at children’s workplaces follow these; earlier the workplace was thought to be the most likely site for such crimes. The criminals are mainly relatives, followed by parents and then caregivers. Can anything be more painful? The safe haven of the home is where such crimes occur the most, and the perpetrators are adults with whom children should feel the safest. The helplessness, betrayed trust and psychological damage of children can barely be imagined. Worse, children may be led to believe that this is a form of ‘love’ that must be kept secret. Fear or misplaced trust in the perpetrator may prevent children from complaining. Adults, such as a parent, may refuse to believe the child or deliberately turn a blind eye.

The law against child abuse and the juvenile justice system may have helped awareness, but the increase in crime shows indifference to these. But the ease of placing a complaint in the central portal may have brought about an increase in complaints. Experts have pointed out that 50% of the perpetrators are paedophiles. Labelling this a disease would lighten the criminal aspect, hence this should be seen as a form of sexual aberration. It is important to recognise its signs inside the home to protect children. The crucial issue here is that responsible adults must be willing to see the danger and be alert. The conditions surrounding the crime, domestic or professional, are complicated by the nature of relationships between adults. Besides, there is little awareness in India about paedophilia or the ability to distinguish it from other forms of sexual domination and coercion that lead to the rape of older girls and women. But the NCRB report has made this identification and understanding urgent.

Source: Telegraph India, 28/11/24

Poor mix: Editorial on 77% of Indian infants lacking WHO-suggested dietary diversity

 

There are several challenges to ensuring MDD. The most formidable among these is food inflation — the price of pulses has increased by 10% in each of the 12 previous months

Indian children are not keeping well. The recently released Global Hunger Index threw up grave data about child wasting (18.7%), child stunting (35.5%) and the prevalence of undernourishment (13.7%) among Indian children. This has now been followed by a study by the World Health Organization that has pinpointed a probable cause for this: some 77% of infants in India, aged between 6-23 months, do not receive the Minimum Dietary Diversity — a mixture of at least five out of the eight recommended food groups, including breast milk, grains, roots and tubers, legumes and nuts, dairy products, flesh foods, eggs, vitamin A-rich fruits or vegetables and other fruits and vegetables — that is required for healthy growth. Lest the Indian government dismiss this data as foreign mischief, it is instructive to note that as per the latest National Family Health Survey, 88.5% of the age group failed to meet the dietary diversity standards. This poor-quality diet is one of the most significant barriers to not only children’s survival, growth and development but also their learning abilities.

There are several challenges to ensuring MDD. The most formidable among these is food inflation — the price of pulses has increased by 10% in each of the 12 previous months. A majority of Indians, even non-vegetarians, derive their protein, a key nutrient for growth, from pulses. A report by a group of United Nations organisations has also shown that 55.6% of the Indian population cannot afford a healthy diet. Gender discrimination that adversely affects women is another hurdle. Children suffer on account of the lack of MDD in mothers, which leads to breast milk being inadequately nutritious. Studies also show that the level of education among mothers affects the dietary diversity of children. Girls, unsurprisingly, fare worse in MDD according to the WHO. Government policies on crops, too, leave a mark on MDD — years of disproportionate emphasis on rice and wheat cultivation have had a deleterious impact on the dietary diversity of all Indians, including children. There is also the mistaken belief that packaged food for children — 21% of the food budget in rural areas and 27% in urban areas is spent on this — can fulfil their dietary requirements. Policies related to food security thus need to be broadened to acknowledge the effect of a myriad conditions that leave a mark on children and their diets.

Source: The  Telegraph: 30/10/24

“Children Displaced in a Changing Climate” Report

 

A recent study conducted by Unicef and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has uncovered a startling trend: at least 43 million child displacements have occurred in the past six years due to extreme weather events. This equates to an alarming average of 20,000 children forced to leave their homes and schools every day. The research highlights the profound impact of floods, storms, wildfires, and droughts on children and the urgent need for climate action.

Overwhelming Impact of Floods and Storms

Between 2016 and 2021, floods and storms accounted for a staggering 95% of recorded child displacements. The traumatic experience of displacement can have profound consequences for children, including disruptions to their education, access to life-saving vaccines, and social networks.

Displacement Hotspots

China, the Philippines, and India collectively witnessed 22.3 million child displacements, over half of the total number. This is attributed to their geographical vulnerability to extreme weather events and large child populations. Small island states and the Horn of Africa, grappling with the climate crisis and overlapping challenges, also experienced significant child displacements.

Vulnerable Regions

Small Caribbean islands, such as Dominica and Saint Martin, were severely impacted by storms, with 76% of children displaced in Dominica due to Hurricane Maria. Somalia and South Sudan recorded substantial child displacements due to floods, affecting 12% and 11% of their child populations, respectively.

The Climate Crisis Connection

The report underscores the role of climate change in intensifying extreme weather events, making them more destructive and unpredictable. Climate-related disasters are the fastest-growing driver of child displacement, yet they are often overlooked in climate policies and discussions.

Hidden Dangers: Drought and Slow Onset Climate Impacts

While the study focused on immediate weather-related disasters, it acknowledged the underreporting of slow-onset climate impacts such as rising sea levels, desertification, and increasing temperatures. Drought-related child displacements, particularly in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan, remain largely unreported.

Wildfires in the United States

Wildfires were responsible for three-quarters of child displacements in the United States, with additional occurrences in Canada, Israel, Turkey, and Australia. The expansion of the wildland-urban interface has contributed to these displacements.

Bleak Future Outlook

Children accounted for one in three of the 135 million global internal displacements linked to weather-related disasters between 2016 and 2021. The study predicts a worsening trend, with riverine floods posing the most significant future risk, potentially displacing 96 million children over the next 30 years. Urgent action, including the phase-out of fossil fuels, is required to address this impending crisis.

On Children’s Day, can we imagine a system that values empathy, not just exams?

 

Education should be about cooperative growth, managing feelings and differences – not passing exams.

Some time ago, a group of high-school students were asked to name their greatest fear. “…being scolded for what I did accidentally,” “ …being rejected by friends,” “ that I’ll fail ,” “losing my temper,” “…disappointing my parents.”

Had these things had been discussed in class?

Silence.

Children need to share their worries and doubts, talk about why they get angry or cannot control themselves. Though every adult knows that an emotionally stable child will be a more focused student, such is the tyranny of expectation that most teachers are too hard worked and weary to tell their managements that a child’s understanding of himself is as important as his grasp of academic subjects.

When universal education based on textbooks was introduced into an oral and traditional culture like ours, it had no room for an attendant mentoring the development of a student’s personality. No one thought children needed anything other than order and discipline. The more the student studied the more distanced he became from his natural environment, community and native culture. This tradition has continued with the entire training between the child’s 5th and 15th years concentrated on the material world around her about which she is relentlessly tested. The higher order of thinking skills — dare one say spiritual growth, a zone of intimacy impossible to describe but in need of discussion — has faded. Education has become a way of life to pass examinations.

Children need to share their worries and doubts, talk about why they get angry or cannot control themselves. Though every adult knows that an emotionally stable child will be a more focused student, such is the tyranny of expectation that most teachers are too hard worked and weary to tell their managements that a child’s understanding of himself is as important as his grasp of academic subjects.

When universal education based on textbooks was introduced into an oral and traditional culture like ours, it had no room for an attendant mentoring the development of a student’s personality. No one thought children needed anything other than order and discipline. The more the student studied the more distanced he became from his natural environment, community and native culture. This tradition has continued with the entire training between the child’s 5th and 15th years concentrated on the material world around her about which she is relentlessly tested. The higher order of thinking skills — dare one say spiritual growth, a zone of intimacy impossible to describe but in need of discussion — has faded. Education has become a way of life to pass examinations.

Over the last decade or so, as teenage suicides and child-against-child violence began to rise, a question has repeated itself:

On the road to academic excellence, did we miss something? We know that we cannot reverse this system but surely, we can modify it with the support of teachers and other stakeholders. In a civilised society (and we congratulate ourselves endlessly about our heritage) each generation is expected to make the society better and safer for the next one. Hence, the tremendous societal role schools have. Training in understanding the value of cooperative growth, empathy and managing feelings and differences has to start early. Countless hours have been spent discussing how personal and social transformation is possible through a well-designed course on social and personal ethics. Hardly anything is said about training the teachers, the agents of awakening.

Recently, I watched a video describing millennials and their socio-emotional disabilities. A chilling list of features: Entitlement, self-obsession, narcissism, low tolerance, inability to focus on anything for any length of time. This might well be true of some of them but not all of them. Many youngsters everywhere are responding warmly to outreach messages for help. Any request sent out on behalf of students in distress or appeals for food or donations to animal shelters is almost immediately met with a flood of calls and assurances. Some of the respondees are school goers.

What does that tell us? Someone inspired them. Something other than their textbooks brought out the best in them. A routine counter to the idea that values can be taught is that they can only be imbibed (“We learnt from our parents.”) But what if family members are too busy to spend time with children?

A policy to foster the idea and importance of the self in harmony with wider and wider circles can be implemented through schools to influence at least those children who get to attend school who will one day lead their communities and society; they will write and teach, build cities, patent new medicines and technologies; they will enact policies and laws.

This is especially important when millions of Indian children below the age of 10 have no hope of an education. Disadvantaged by illiteracy, they are vulnerable to all the negative forces around them. Doesn’t that leave the rest of us with a duty to overcome our limited knowledge based on traditions and prejudices? The intense competition that contemporary life fosters has already left many youngsters with no inner resources to counter anxiety, fear and rage. Some young children are so lonely and edgy they take their own lives when they fail entrance exams, do not get the kind of clothes they want or feel inadequate in English-language classes. It is clear that the skills necessary to manage feelings of anger and disappointment have become extremely urgent and are as important as academic achievement. No single plan of action will fit everyone. Each region, possibly individual schools in consultation with neighbouring institutions, will need to devise what works for them.

Educating for peace seeks to nurture a moral vision about the role of the self in the family, society, nation and the world. A six-year-old cannot understand the term social justice. A 14-year-old can and must. But the former can understand the idea of sharing and fairness, which in turn will develop into a grasp of what the latter understands in five seconds. An eight-year-old can only be told that he must not destroy leaves and plants for fun or stone a pup for fun. A 15- year-old understands that leaves, birds, insects, people and climate are all linked. If we are to survive on an impoverished planet that cannot manage its food-stocks or famines, its water resources or forests, we must, as quickly as possible, see ourselves as a global family and sensitise children to understand that what affects one group in one part of the world, will eventually affect everyone everywhere else. We have already learnt how to make children healthier but we have paid less attention to their hearts and minds.

Surely the goal of education is to equip people to lead meaningful lives and not only to make a living.

Written by Mini Krishnan

The writer was Editor, Translations, at Oxford University Press and Macmillan India and currently co-ordinates a project of translations for the Tamil Nadu Textbook & Educational Services Corporation.

Source: Indian Express, 14/11/22

Children born in 2021 to be twice as affected by climate change: Study

 A new study showed that today's young generation will be much severely affected by climate extremes like wildfires, droughts, floods etc than today's adults.

Researchers have found that today's children will be hit much harder by climate extremes than today's adults.The findings of the study were published in the journal 'Science'.

During their lifetime, a child born in 2021 will experience on average twice as many wildfires, between two and three times more droughts, almost three times more river floods and crop failures, and seven times more heatwaves compared to a person who's for instance 60 years old today, the researchers found based on data from the Inter-sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP).

This is under a scenario of current greenhouse gas emission reduction pledges by governments which will be a topic at the upcoming world climate summit COP26 in Glasgow.

"Our results highlight a severe threat to the safety of young generations and call for drastic emission reductions to safeguard their future," said lead-author Wim Thiery from Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

"We even have strong reasons to think that our calculations underestimate the actual increases that young people will face," added Thiery.

Regarding droughts, heatwaves, river floods and crop failures, people under the age of 40 today will live what the researchers call "an unprecedented life".

"The good news: we can indeed take much of the climate burden from our childrens' shoulders if we limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by phasing out fossil fuel use," said Katja Frieler, who is coordinating ISIMIP, she's a leading scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study.

"If we increase climate protection from current emission reduction pledges and get in line with a 1.5-degree target, we will reduce young people's potential exposure to extreme events on average by 24 per cent globally," explained Frieler.

"For North America, it's minus 26 per cent, for Europe and Central Asia minus 28 per cent, and in the Middle East and North Africa even minus 39 per cent. This is a huge opportunity," added Frieler.

For instance, under a scenario of current insufficient climate policies, dangerous heatwaves that affect 15 per cent of the global land area today could increase to 46 per cent, hence triple by the end of the century.

Yet limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, which is the ambition of the Paris Climate Agreement signed by almost all countries worldwide, would reduce the affected land area to 22 per cent. This is more than today but significantly less than with unmitigated warming.

The analysis is the first of its kind. To assess age-dependent extreme event exposure, the researchers took a collection of multi-model climate impact projections from the ISIMIP project building on the work of dozens of research groups worldwide.

The researchers combined this with country-scale life-expectancy data, population data and temperature trajectories from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

Source: Hindustan Times, 27/09/21