Children: Innocent victims of an unjust social order
by Adolfo Perez Esquivel
Although the plight of children is no doubt worse in the developing countries,
where infant mortality, malnutrition and illiteracy are widespread, such
evils are not uncommon in many wealthier parts of the world. A report published
by the U.S. Congress last year sounded the alarm by drawing attention to
the fact that thousands of American children were living below the poverty
line. This, it said, was a "national tragedy", which threatened the future
of the nation.
The report also pointed out that poverty had serious consequences for
children and adolescents: poor health, scholastic underachievement, early
pregnancies, crime, drug abuse and so on.
It stressed that poverty was the greatest amongst blacks and Hispanics:
in 1987 only 15 per cent of white American children where poor, while proportions
among blacks and Hispanics were 39 per cent and 45 per cent respectively.
In other words, the most powerful country in the world has proved unable,
despite its huge economic resources, to offer a large section of its young
people a decent future.
In Brazil, children and teenagers account for almost a third of the
country's population of 150 million. Eight million kids live on the streets
in a state of almost total destitution. According to the Brazilian Foundation
for Children and Adolescents, barely one million children receive official
aid, the rest are left to their own devices.
UNICEF believes them all to be in state of "social risk", and estimates
that almost 40(),000 girls under the age of fourteen are forced to prostitute
themselves in the garimpos (brothels) of Mata Grosso de Para, in the state
of Maranhao.
In the northeast and in the southern states like San Paulo, minors are
exploited as a source of cheap labour. In cities, a third of all children
are illiterate, while in rural areas the figure is almost 48 per cent.
Their state of health is almost equally alarming- 60 per cent of them
die in their first year. 20 per cent of babies are underweight because
they are not properly fed. Only about 19 per cent of mothers breast feed
their babies until the sixth month. The mortality rate of mothers during
childbirth is also very high.
Cuba is the only Latin American country where the infant mortality is
comparable to, and in some cases lower than, those of the developed countries.
Chile and Costa Rica do not lag very far behind. Bolivia, Haiti, Peru,
Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua on the other hand, rank amongst the
countries with the highest infant mortality rates in the world.
A third of Argentina's 33 million live in poverty. Every day 58 children
under the age one die of malnutrition in that country, which not so long
ago used to be a major food exporter and used to be described as the "world's
granary".
Malnutrition is believed to have caused grave neurological damage in
a total of 1.2 million Argentinean children, with the result that 15 to
20 per cent of their brain cells have been destroyed.
The World Bank in its recent report on poverty, pointed out that there
are about 1.1 billion people in the world whose daily income is less than
one dollar. On the world map of poverty, Latin America has the singular
distinction of being the part of the world where the gulf between poor
and the rich is the most marked.
Although average income per inhabitant is five to six times higher than
in southern Asia or black Africa, almost 20 per cent of people in Latin
America continue to live in extreme poverty.
But it has to be remembered that the structural adjustment policy imposed
on poor countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) has had the effect of dragging them down into a quagmire of recession
and poverty. It is that policy which has caused the gulf between rich and
poor countries to go on widening.
Nor is there any political will in the North to put an end to this state
of affairs, to change the rules of international trade, or to guarantee
that raw materials and goods produced in the South command proper prices.
On the contrary, these unfair terms of trade have not only persisted
but gotten worse. The countries of the North continue to demand repayment
of an unjust debt that is crippling the poor countries. To crown everything,
the South has now become a net exporter of capital.
One of the consequences of this iniquitous situation is the tragic plight
of children. It is not just a social problem, not just an exotic, if lamentable,
feature of those picturesque countries of the South, but the direct consequence
of an economic policy implemented by the North.
The donations that charities send to the poor countries are naturally
welcome, hut they are not enough. They are a response to whatever the latest
disaster or emergency happens to be, but can never have more than a palliative
effect. They cannot solve the underlying problems.
True charitable aid remains of crucial importance because every day
it saves thousands of people from starvation. But it should be accompanied
by development programs that are geared to the specific characteristics
of the various regions of the South. Unless there is sustained and determined
cooperation on development, the children of the South will continue to
die in their hundreds of thousands.
Those that manage to survive the various forms of infantile mortality
will in a few years become teenagers then adults. They will demand an explanation
for what they have had to endure at the hands of their governments and
the nations of the North. They will rebel.
A highly explosive time bomb has begun ticking away and no amount of
promises or sweet words will defuse it. It is surely urgent for the governments
of the world to come to their senses and construct, before it is to late,
the new economic order that will be our only chance of building a more
harmonious world and inciting mankind to rediscover the virtues of sharing.
The human race is facing a crisis, so it must collectively come up with
new development models. It must show itself to be both daring and generous,
otherwise it will implode into a black hole of unbridled selfishness.
In the 80 s, Latin America exported more than ever before and had a
very favourable trade balance. Anywhere else in the world, that kind of
performance would have gone hand in hand with the kind wealth enjoyed by,
say, Japan or Germany. But in Latin America it did not generate enough
income even to service its foreign debt; indeed, that debt in creased during
the period.
This is concrete proof that indebtedness is a trap from which it is
extremely difficult to escape. Increasingly, the peoples of the South believe
that they will never see the end of the tunnel. Something must be done
to help them snap out the trap of
indebtedness, which has the effect of strangling society.
In order to reduce their budgets, as instructed by the IMF, governments
have been slashing social expenditure in all its forms (health, education,
benefits and subsidies in general). As a result, poverty is spreading and
the middle classes are becoming paupers. City infrastructures are decaying
and delinquency is on the increase.
This general process of impoverishment has a particularly disastrous
effect on children, who end up being abandoned by society. This puts them
in a permanent state of risk. In Latin America as a whole there are now
some 100 million children who live, eat and sleep on the streets. The social
ill for which Bogota was notorious ten years ago has now become the Latin
American norm. The continent crawls with olvidados (abandoned children).
The mind boggles at the violence suffered by such children. Sold, imprisoned,
kidnapped or exploited, they suffer a slow and interminable martyrdom.
Only recently in Rio de Janeiro, a mass grave was discovered which contained
the bodies of dozens of children murdered by the Squadrons of Death, who
regard murder as an excellent way of keeping down juvenile delinquency.
But delinquency is a form of survival. It is a way for the weakest and
poorest to wage a war against their condition. If economic cooperation
and development fail to get beyond the planning stage, that war could spread
in various forms throughout the South. Two-thirds of the world's population
go hungry and have to watch their children die. They will certainly not
forever stay on the sidelines meekly staring at the rich as they launch
into the feast.
Adolfo Perez Esquivel is a human rights
activist in Latin America and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. This article
originally appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique, Paris.
This article was published in New Renaissance magazine Vol.2,
No.1
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