Getting
to Know Your International Contacts—Part 1
Every three seconds one of the world's
children dies from a preventable cause - dehydration, hunger, disease, violence
- more than ten million a year. (Grow Up Free from Poverty Coalition). My
grandma always said “be thankful for what you consider your little, as some
people are dying to get that little”. The extent of poverty worldwide is heart
rending.
Poverty
denies opportunities to people of all ages. Lost opportunities in childhood
cannot always be regained later - childhood is a one-off window of opportunity
and development. Poverty experienced by children, even over short periods, can
affect the rest of their lives. Malnutrition in early childhood, for example,
can lead to life-long learning difficulties and poor health.
The
international community has committed itself to meeting the Millennium
Development Goals by 2015. This includes halving poverty rates, cutting by
two-thirds the deaths of children under five and ensuring that all children in
the world complete at least primary education. Already progress is slower than
is needed - only substantial investment in children now will enable this vital
reduction in different forms of childhood poverty to be achieved.
CHINA
The
world's most populous country with a population of 1.27 billion in 2001, China
has made major strides in poverty reduction in recent years. By 2001 5 per cent
of China's population lived below the national poverty line. Rural poverty is
estimated to have fallen from 250 million in 1978 to 35 million in 2000 and
from 30.7 per cent of the population to 3.7 per cent according to official
statistics. Between 4 and 8 per cent of the urban population, somewhere between
15 and 31 million people live in poverty. Much of this decline in
poverty is due to far-reaching processes of economic and social transition.
However, economic growth has been slower in Western China, leading to higher
poverty rates.
4.2
million Chinese children live in absolute poverty and 8.7 million live in
disadvantaged conditions.
A
Minimum Living Standards (dibao) system has been developed since 1997 and by
2002 covered 23 per cent of poor urban households. Though this is the main form
of social relief in urban China, there are concerns that the amounts allocated
are too small to meet people's basic needs for food, clothing shelter, health
and education and in particular, aren't enough to allow families to pay the
compulsory education fee. Furthermore, large numbers of vulnerable people are
excluded because they are unregistered migrants, or are disqualified by local
administrations.
The
most vulnerable groups in rural parts of China are women, children and the
elderly, as well as ethnic minorities who live in remote mountainous areas. The
increasing migration of rural male labourers to urban and eastern coastal areas
has sharply extended the feminization of rural labour and agriculture.
Now
China is the fourth largest country in the world and home to more than 1.3
billion people. China is the first
developing country to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of
reducing by half the number of its people living in extreme poverty and hunger.
Its reform-driven economic growth, together with a well-funded national poverty
reduction programme, has brought about a major reduction in rural poverty.
Let
us all try to make a difference one person at a time!!!!!!!!!
References
Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/)
