State Failing as Parent

December 3, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Pavol Stracansky

SOFIA, Bulgaria, Dic 02 (IPS) – Governments in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are being urged to end the institutionalisation of babies as more than 15,000 children a year in the region continue to be subjected to a practice experts say often leaves them physically and mentally scarred for life.At a UNICEF conference in the Bulgarian capital Sofia last week, representatives from 20 governments across the region heard that every hour on average two young children, mostly babies, are separated from their parents and sent into institutional care.

And, despite concrete reforms in some states, and with institutionalisation on the rise in more than half the countries in the region, more work needs to be done to ensure childcare across the entire region is radically overhauled, UNICEF and other groups say.

Jean Claude Legrand, regional advisor on child protection at the UNICEF regional office for Central and Eastern Europe and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), told IPS: “Childcare in the region needs to be de-institutionalised and there needs to be a change of attitude towards what can be best done for children.”

A relic of communism, child institutionalisation remains common across the former Eastern bloc.

A report presented at the conference in Sofia showed that more than a million children in the region are separated from their families and more than 600,000, including at least 31,000 aged three or under, are in state-run facilities.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia has the highest rate of institutionalisation in the world.

Many families who feel they cannot support a child, often for financial reasons, turn them over to state-run orphanages. Support services for parents considering abandoning children are often weak, and in some cases non-existent.

This leaves some feeling that they have no choice but to abandon their child to an institution, especially if the child is disabled.

But while orphanages across the region do provide basic care, campaigners for de-institutionalisation point to studies showing that putting children in institutions, especially when very young, can result in severe developmental problems.

Among these are brain and other physical growth deficiencies, cognitive problems and delays in the development of speech and language skills believed to be caused by a lack of stimulus and affection in institutions.

This, however, is not universally acknowledged or even known about in some parts of the region, and many people working in or in charge of childcare continue to see institutionalisation as a benefit for some children.

Beth Maughan of UK-based charity Hope and Homes for Children which works in Eastern Europe helping governments deinstitutionalise childcare, told IPS: “Among people working at or running, institutions, there is often a lack of information on the effects that institutionalisation has on children under three.”

Other studies have also shown that it costs as much as six times more to house a child in an institution as to provide social services to vulnerable families, is three times more expensive than professional foster care and twice as expensive as placing them in a small family home.

But despite the proven negative effects on young children put in care and the potential economic savings of deinstitutionalisation, moving away from institutionalisation remains a challenge in many countries in the region.

Often state services are not linked, and different stages of childcare responsibility can fall under different ministries, leading to a lack of a uniform strategy for any childcare reform.

Such reform is also often low priority for governments.

Attitudes have proved slow to change. The belief that it is better to grow up in an orphanage than in a poverty-stricken family – thinking which has been prevalent since communist times – remains deeply entrenched in some communities. In some cases, parents who were themselves institutionalised see it as the best option for children of their own.

Ignorance among those involved in childcare and social stigma also means that children with disabilities, ethnic minorities and infants born to HIV positive women are at high risk of being institutionalised. It is not uncommon for mothers to be actively encouraged to give up their babies at birth.

The subsequent predominance of institutionalisation and prevailing attitudes have suppressed the development of alternative care options for abandoned children, such as foster care and small home facilities, as well as support networks to prevent abandonment in the first place.

This, those working in the field say, has only encouraged more child institutionalisation.

Maughan told IPS: “The fact that institutions exist encourages them to be used. In a borderline case where there might be some concern over a child, decisions may be made to simply put them in an institution rather than making a lot of effort to analyse whether this is actually necessary.

“We know from our own experience this happens. But if there is no institution, more is likely to be done to determine whether a child should be left with its family.”

However, despite the apparently considerable barriers to deinstitutionalisation, campaigners remain optimistic that the placement of under-threes in orphanages in the region can be stopped before the end of the decade.

Some countries have recently made significant advances in reforming their childcare systems. Romania, Serbia and Croatia have introduced legislation to ban the placing of children under the age of three in institutions while Bulgaria has already started closing down some of its orphanages.

Other countries have also pledged to take concrete steps to reform their childcare systems and move towards ending institutionalisation of infants.

“Some countries have made incredible progress on de-institutionalisation in recent years,” UNICEF’s Legrand told IPS.

“What we want to see, by 2020, is laws, mechanisms and services in place for ensuring that all children below three years can live in a family environment.

“Hopefully, getting results on (deinstitutionalisation) of children below the age of three will gradually close the flow (of children into orphanages) and stop as many children being put in institutions as there are today.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Economic Policy, Europe, Featured, Social Issues Tagged With: , ,

‘The Children Could Die’ in Eastern DRC Fighting

November 26, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Baudry Aluma

BUKAVU, DR Congo, Nov 26 (IPS) – Humanitarian agencies working in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been overwhelmed following a massive displacement triggered by fighting between the Congolese army (FARDC) and rebel movement M23 in North Kivu."The situation is truly precarious. There is no medicine, no food. Children could die. People are spending the night outside, each one beside their baggage, and it is very cold," says Roger Manegabe, head of a family who managed to reach Bukavu from North Kivu.

"We’re missing school. We’re hungry, there’s no drinking water, there’s no electricity. I’m 16 years old and war is all I’ve known from the time I was born. What will become of us?" said Fiston, Manegabe’s son.

Since the start of the year, conflict in the two Kivu provinces — militias in South Kivu have also clashed — has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation and uprooted nearly 650,000 people, according to U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Adrian Edwards.

Manegaba’s family is among some 250,000 civilians newly displaced since April in North Kivu, and a further 339,000 in South Kivu. According to Edwards, during this period more than 40,000 people also fled to Uganda and 15,000 others to Rwanda. And since August, Burundi has received nearly 1,000 new Congolese refugees.

Rebel fighters captured Goma, the province’s largest city, on Nov. 20, and Sake the following day, before their advance stalled.

M23 was launched on Mar. 12 with a mutiny of Congolese army officers and soldiers. It is now putting forward a broad set of demands covering politics, social issues, human rights and governance. The movement is demanding direct talks with Congolese President Joseph Kabila as a precondition for retreating from Goma.

The group’s political spokesperson, Jean-Marie Runiga Lugerero, held a preliminary meeting on Sunday Nov. 25 with Kabila in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, following a regional summit on the crisis in eastern DRC.

More than 30,000 people who fled the Kanyaruchinya sector in North Kivu have found refuge at a camp in Mugunga, swelling the total numbers there to 40,000. They told the UNHCR representative in the province, Lazard-Etienne Kouassi, who visited the camp on Nov. 22, that they had not received food since their arrival and that they were eager to go back to their villages.

They asked UNHCR to make vehicles available to help the most vulnerable displaced people, such as children and the elderly, in order to quickly return home. Kouassi promised to respond to the request in line with the agency’s capabilities.

Conditions are similarly precarious at Sake, some 27 kilometres south of Goma. Here, some displaced persons are living in classrooms or churches, while others are forced to sleep in the open. Due to a lack of humanitarian assistance, they have had to beg or work for residents of the town in order to survive.

World Vision estimates that there are 200,000 children at risk from Goma alone. According to the international charity’s reports from partners on the ground, many children have been separated from their parents in the confusion surrounding the fall of the town that began as M23 approached Goma on Nov. 12.

Many of these children are now being exploited by families in Goma, according to Junior Alimasi, head of cooperation at the children’s parliament of North Kivu. "They have gone to work for these families in exchange for food and shelter. In November, we’ve already recorded complaints of abuse from two dozen children,” he told IPS.

"We have opened the doors to several thousand refugees, mostly women and children," Father Piero Gavioli, director of the Don Bosco Centre, which shelters children at risk, told IPS by phone from Goma.

"We’re carrying out a head count, which suggests there are around 2,500 households, with an average of two children per household, which means 6,000 or 7,000 refugees."

The ad hoc camps for displaced people fell short of what’s needed even before the latest advance by M23, according to a report published in October by the European Union’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in South Kivu.

OCHA said the province has been affected by a deteriorating security situation which threatens thousands of civilians and has caused the reduction or even suspension of humanitarian efforts in the region.

"The creation of ad hoc camps spreads cholera, measles… the overcrowded camps include many children who have not been vaccinated and are now exposed to brutal epidemics,” the report says.

Maxime Nama, information assistant for OCHA in South Kivu said: "Children are recruited against their will, used as porters or even as combatants, and in the case of girls, sexually exploited. The violence and the fighting put them at grave risk of being injured or killed."

Father Piero said that Western countries were guilty of failing to help the thousands of people in danger. "Today," he told journalists during a Nov. 22 videoconference, "I will repeat my accusation, even if it goes unheard."

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Conflict, Featured, Human Rights Tagged With: ,

Q&A: Swapping Children for Protection in Central African Republic

August 29, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Kristin Palitza

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Aug 28 (IPS) – The protection of children remains critical in the Central African Republic, where parents willingly give their children to armed groups in exchange for protection and services.This is according to United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) ambassador Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, who spoke to IPS during his visit to South Africa.

Beah had just returned from a trip to CAR where he witnessed the release of 10 child soldiers in the conflict-ridden, northeastern town of N’dele by the rebel group the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP).

The move comes after the CPJP signed a peace accord with the government on Aug. 25 – yet another small step towards ending years of violence in the country. The release of the children was the group’s show of commitment towards peace. However, more than 2,500 boys and girls are thought to still work for various armed groups in the Central African nation.

Seven years of civil war have led to food scarcity, a collapsed economy and limited access to healthcare and education. Despite its mineral wealth, CAR remains one of the world’s least-developed countries. In 2011, CAR ranked 179 out of 186 countries in the U.N. Human Development Index.

“In CAR, parents willingly give their children to armed groups in exchange for protection and services, even though it’s against the children’s human rights. That makes it very difficult to negotiate the release of children,” Beah told IPS.

One of the armed groups operating in CAR is the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by internationally hunted Joseph Kony. Two LRA leaders under Kony, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo, who are sought by the International Criminal Court, are reportedly hiding in CAR.

The LRA has increased its attacks in the country since early 2012 and continues to abduct children as fighters.

Beah was himself forcibly recruited into Sierra Leone’s civil war, in which his parents and two brothers were killed, when he was 13. He fought alongside rebel groups for two years until he was removed from the army and placed in a rehabilitation home.

He now lives in New York, where he works as a human rights activist. His book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” has been translated into 35 languages and was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 50 weeks.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Q: You witnessed the release of 10 child soldiers in CAR, one of the world’s poorest nations. What is life like there?

A: The government of CAR only has control over the capital city, Bangui. When you arrive in N’dele you understand how it is possible for an armed group to operate there; it is because the government is not providing social and economic services. Poverty is very stark, there are no resources or opportunities.

So it’s the armed group there, the CPJP, which provides some services. That’s why the group is very entrenched in the community. You see them walk around with weapons everywhere.

Q: Armed groups are part of the social fabric?

A: Yes, exactly. Still, the kids don’t want to fight. Once you take them away from the commanders, they tell you “I don’t want to do this.” But there are no alternatives beyond joining the armed group. The community relies on them. And the rebels have all the opportunities.

Q: How does a release operation happen?

A: The military doesn’t want to release the kids. They hide them. When you arrive at a military camp, the children who were identified are nowhere to be found. There are negotiations with the commanders until, slowly, they bring the kids out. After that, you have to leave immediately, because some of the children’s families live within the communities (and belong to the rebels).

The children are brought to a transit and rehabilitation centre in N’dele, where they receive psycho-social therapy as well as vocational training or are sent back to school.

Q: It sounds like a long, difficult process.

A: Yes. Added to that is that the rebels have weapons and ammunition, while you don’t have any protection. You rely on them keeping their promises. Everything about the situation is dangerous. When we landed in N’dele, the whole airport was surrounded by rebels with brand-new, sophisticated weapons, guarding the place. You are very exposed.

Q: What will happen to the rest of the estimated 2,500 child soldiers in CAR?

A: Right now, the rehabilitation centre takes care of 35 kids, and I witnessed the release of 10 more. Slowly, more and more are being released. All eight rebel groups in the country have signed action plans to release children. But if nobody forces them, they will not do it.

Q: Visiting N’dele was to some degree a return to your past. How did that feel?

A: It brought up a lot of memories. I was driving in the car with the child soldiers who had just been released and could feel their uncertainty about being removed from what they know. I was in that same position (when I was a child soldier). I told them: “Things will be difficult, but you’re going to get through this.”

Once they understood that I had the same experience, there was a kinship that helped ease the situation a little. It’s such a daunting situation. You had this power of the weapon – some of them were lieutenants – and all of a sudden you’re just a child again, trying to figure out what to do with your life.

Q: How did they react when they heard your story?

A: They asked me questions repetitively. “Is it really possible to get through this? Can we actually have another life after this?” I was very honest with them. “It’s possible but it’s not easy. You’re going to be frustrated a lot. It’s not going to be as fast as you like.”

They are coming from an experience where they get things as fast as they like because they have a weapon. They understand these things when they come from someone like me.

Q: Are there viable alternatives for children in a poverty-stricken country like CAR?

A: There are viable alternatives, but they require long-term investment. If you want successful rehabilitation, you have to be willing to look beyond one year.

Q: What are the core demands of the CPJP and other armed groups?

A: During my visit, I talked to CPJP leader Abdoulaye Issene Ramadan. He said he started his group because of social-economic inequalities in the country. The official demand is for the government to provide services. Of course he is right, but he is using the argument to pursue his own, personal agenda. He is tapping into people’s needs, so they buy into his ideology. But then the only option he provides is armed struggle, which doesn’t solve people’s problems.

Q: What is Ramadan’s hidden agenda?

A: He will not tell you, but from close observation you can tell that he wants to benefit from the natural resources in the area, the diamonds, the gold, and so on. In the end, all natural resource wealth goes to the armed groups or the government, but never reaches the people. That’s the problem.

Q: What presence does the LRA have in CAR?

A: The LRA is very strong in the southeast of the country. A lot of work needs to be done in that area to protect children. Since the beginning of this year, there have been frequent attacks and abductions (of children) by the LRA. Already, the government has no capacity to fight the armed groups in the country. Now there is this foreign group that has come in that is even stronger.

Q: Do you see any chance of the LRA agreeing to peace in CAR as well?

A: I am not sure. The LRA is very unpredictable. But what I do know is that many young people from this group would run away if they had a secure place to go to, instead of being arrested by authorities that try to get information out of them.

If there were a place that took them back as children and rehabilitated them, they would find a way to escape. You can’t just tell someone to put down a gun and then leave him out in the cold or throw him into prison. Structures need to be put into place for these children to leave. To get to the heart of the LRA or any other armed group you need to make sure that the candidates who can be recruited are not available.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Human Rights, Interview, Peace Tagged With: ,

Israeli Soldiers Show No Mercy to Palestinian Children

August 27, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Aug 26 (IPS) – In a hamlet of the occupied West Bank, the testimony goes, Israeli troops chase a Palestinian child. “He was about two metres away – the company commander cocked his weapon in his face…The kid fell on the ground, crying and begging for his life.” “It was this kind of gray situation, not that terrible,” the Israeli sergeant’s report continues. “Because those kids really do throw stones and that’s risky – it’s not like we actually meant to harm them. I suppose it’s a very scarring experience for them, but the situation is complicated.”

The year is 2007. The sergeant’s account is one of 47 testimonies collected from over 30 Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2005-2011.

Entitled ‘Children and Youth – Soldiers’ Testimonies 2005-2011’, a 71-page booklet has just been released for distribution by the group ‘Breaking the Silence’.

The NGO founded in 2004 by Israeli veterans of the Second Palestinian Intifadah uprising (2000-2005) is dedicated to documenting daily life under military rule in the Palestinian Territories through soldiers’ experiences during their routine round of duty.

In order to sensitise Israeli 12-graders who, next year, will be drafted in the army, the NGO plans to distribute copies of the report at the gates of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv high schools. The school year started last Monday.

“Israeli children enjoy the protection of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is signatory, whereas Palestinian children grow up without protection,” says the brochure’s preface.

“That specific kid, who actually lay there on the ground, begging for his life, was actually nine years old,” the sergeant notes in his testimony. “I think of our nine-year-old kids (…) – a kid has to beg for his life? A loaded gun is pointed at him and he has to plead for mercy?

“But if we hadn’t entered the village, then stones would be thrown the next day and perhaps someone would be wounded or killed.”

“Stone-throwing ceased?” asks the NGO interviewer.

“No,” is the laconic admission.

The events described in the booklet took place as a calm security situation prevailed, after the Intifadah subsided. Yet, the testimonies show that racism, abuse, violence, wounding and killing by targeted shooting, even if “unintentional”, of Palestinian children and teenagers continues unabated.

The NGO grappled with the decision to expose Israeli pupils to the reality depicted so graphically in the report, acknowledges Avner Gvaryahu, a former soldier now turned activist, whose statement appears anonymously in the report. “Yet if you’re old enough to enlist and carry a weapon, you’re old enough to know what’s really happening in the territories.”

And, Palestinian children are old enough, so it seems, to be arrested at gunpoint, harassed and humiliated, beaten “to a pulp”, used as “human shields” against other Palestinians – this, despite an Israeli Supreme Court ruling from 2002.

“At first, you point your gun at some five-year-old kid, and feel bad – saying, it’s not right,” another soldier testifies. "But that changes when you go into the village and they throw stones at you.”

During another incident mentioned in the report, a company commander catches a 12-year-old boy, forces him to get down on his knees, yells threats at him “like a madman” in order to intimidate other youth who’d threw stones at the troops.

"The kid cried, peed his pants. (…) It was like something out of a Vietnam movie," recounts the soldier. “I knew it was just a hollow threat – the guy’s an officer, after all, and I don’t think an officer would do anything, but…”

Eventually, a village elder persuaded the commander to free the boy. The next day, two Molotov cocktails were hurled at vehicles driving nearby.

"So we didn’t really do our job," the soldier concludes his testimony. "And you wonder what that job really is.”

Most Israeli youth are educated in a system – be it family or school – that, although praising its intrinsic moral values, seldom questions the army’s operational routine and the moral toll it exerts on its soldiers.

National security is usually paramount. Schools extol patriotism, courage, sacrifice. NGO activists insist that moral questioning could prepare future conscripts to fight against indifference and cruelty displayed by fellow soldiers.

The army has said this report is one-sided, arguing that the NGO failed to submit to it its material, thus rendering a military probe into cases of human rights infringement, not to say crimes, impossible.

"The organisation’s refusal to turn to the authorities indicates its true motives – to generate negative publicity for the Israeli army and its soldiers," a military spokesperson stated.

Activists refute the incitement charge, stressing that they support army service but, at the same time, share the conviction that students must be informed ahead of military service.

Since its creation, ‘Breaking the Silence’ has collected testimonies from more than 800 soldiers. "We’re a society that nurtures family and educational values, but the army treats Palestinian children differently," says executive director Dana Golan. "Each testimony features stories about the maltreatment of children; each such story is a kick in the gut."

Golan is aware that some teens will ignore the brochure, but were they to read just one story, the NGO’s goal would be served.

“The main purpose of ‘Breaking the Silence’ is to arouse public discussion of the moral price that Israeli society pays for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population and dominate it on a daily basis,” states the report’s foreword.

But moral debates are aplenty within Israeli society. Just ten days ago in downtown Jerusalem, three Palestinian teenagers were almost lynched by a crowd of 13- to 19-year-old Israelis. The incident unleashed much breast-beating and condemnation.

Yet, no one entertains the illusion that such collective mea-culpa will end the abuses of the occupation. After all, most Israelis are still convinced that they hold the moral high ground vis-à-vis their Palestinian neighbours even though, to paraphrase the saying, their good intentions pave the road to hell, not to future peace.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Human Rights, Middle East, Report, Security Tagged With: ,

Returning Sudanese Child Soldiers Their Childhood

April 16, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Andrew Green*

JUBA, Apr 15, 2012 (IPS) – As the process of reintegrating South Sudan’s child soldiers into their old lives begins soon, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army renewal of its lapsed commitment to release all child soldiers from its ranks in March could mean that within two years children will no longer constitute part of the country’s militia groups.

The SPLA, which is the military wing of the South Sudanese political party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, is one of the few remaining national militaries in the world on the United Nations’ list of parties to conflict who recruit and use child soldiers. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are 2,000 child soldiers in South Sudan. Though none are within the official SPLA, they are affiliated with militia groups that have earned amnesties from the government and are being integrated into the national military.

If the SPLA follows the action plan it has drafted and signed – removing all child soldiers from the militias and working to get them education and training opportunities – the country could be off the list in as soon as two years.

For the child soldiers, though, the process of reintegration could take much longer, as they enter schools or learn skills that will provide other opportunities for making a living outside army barracks.

The process will begin, according to Fatuma H. Ibrahim, the chief of UNICEF’s child protection unit in South Sudan, by identifying and securing the formal release of all child soldiers. On their way out, they will be given civilian clothing, because "what is military remains with the military," she said.

The youth, who can range in age from as young as 12 up to 18, will undergo some group therapy sessions with social workers to try to understand how they came to join the militias and to talk about any violence they may have encountered.

She said there will be about one percent who "really need some clinical management," though their options will be limited in a country with few psychiatric resources. "It’s a very big problem. Most receive tablets, but that’s it."

Family members will also meet with social workers to discuss reintegration and ensure that the children will be welcomed back and discouraged from re-joining.

"The parents have to be ready to receive them," Ibrahim said. In some communities in South Sudan that includes a symbolic transition ceremony.

In a country that has known war for more than two decades, the military is often one of the few viable economic opportunities for young men. Many of the children UNICEF and its partners remove from the ranks followed that pattern – looking to a position with a militia to provide some financial security for themselves and their families.

One of UNICEF’s big challenges is providing opportunities that deter the delisted child soldiers from going back. After the new release rounds take place, the youth will be given an opportunity to choose between going to school, which many of the younger ones will opt for, Ibrahim said, or learning a trade. The country’s limited job market means older youth are encouraged to learn skills like carpentry, which is in increasing demand in rapidly growing towns. In the future, they will be trained in two skills, in case the first one does not prove marketable.

UNICEF and other organisations are also working to provide incentives to keep the child soldiers from re-enlisting. Ibrahim pointed to a livestock-rearing project, where former child soldiers are given a goat to raise and breed.

If the programme is going to work, she said, the incentives have "to be meaningful."

South Sudan’s new action plan was officially signed on Mar. 16 by the country’s Ministry of Defence, the U.N. peacekeeping force in South Sudan – UNMISS, UNICEF and Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy.

Since it achieved independence last year, South Sudan has seen sporadic violence flare up across the country. In the north, there are ongoing hostilities with Sudan. And various parts of the country – especially Jonglei state – have seen consistent intertribal conflict over land rights and cattle.

Coomaraswamy said most of the country’s child soldiers are found in the north, where violence has been most consistent.

South Sudan has been on the U.N. list long before its independence in July 2010. The earlier incarnation of the SPLA – the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement – was one of the original groups included when the list was drafted in 2002.

In 2006 a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed between north and south Sudan, which ended decades of fighting and paved the way for South Sudanese independence. At the time, the SPLA committed to an action plan to release its child soldiers, though it did not completely follow through.

By 2009, monitoring organisations had found no child soldiers within the main SPLA, though they still existed in the militia groups.

Coomaraswamy said the country’s renewed commitment comes from "the power of the list" and pressure from international partners.

And while the U.N. has never sanctioned South Sudan over its inclusion, she said there was always a possibility that would happen. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for instance, has suffered sanctions as a result of its inclusion.

Coomaraswamy said her office is currently in negotiations with the DRC, Myanmar, also known as Burma, and Somalia – the only government militaries who have not yet signed on to an action plan.

*Andrew Green is reporting from South Sudan on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project, an independent journalism programme based in Washington, D.C.

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Conflict, Featured, Human Rights, Peace Tagged With: , ,

BANGLADESH: Child Smugglers Risk Life for a Few Dollars

June 28, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Sujoy Dhar

BENAPOLE, Bangladesh, Jun 28, 2011 (IPS) – Thirteen-year-old Jamal is a Bangladeshi bootlegger who carries goods from Haridaspur town in the Indian state of West Bengal to the border district of Jessore in southwest Bangladesh, playing cat-and-mouse with Indian frontier guards every day.

But luck ran out for the otherwise nimble-footed Jamal when, one day a few months ago, his hand got caught in the barbed wire fence as he tried to flee a chasing Indian trooper.

As Jamal tried to free himself from the wire and cross over to Bangladesh, the burly North Indian sentry pulled him back to the Indian side. The barbs dug into Jamal’s skin, drawing blood and scooping out a shred of his flesh in the tug of war.

"The border guard then stomped over my palm with his heavy boot," recalls Jamal (not his real name). Wounded and bleeding, he managed to return to the safety of his side of the border, Bangladesh, suffering no more than the physical pain. But he was worried about the day’s losses of about 300 taka (four dollars).

Life along the India-Bangladesh border has become a dangerous game for poverty-stricken children trying to make the most of their location by bootlegging. On either side, poverty has produced a large number of young local smugglers, transporting anything from cattle to fruit and narcotics to chocolates.

But children pay a high price for earning a living. "Many children face abuse – physical or sexual – while women engaged in the trade often end up offering sexual favours to border guards to avoid legal hassles and prosecution," says Tariqul Islam of Rights Jessore, a group working to protect the children and trafficked women of Bangladesh.

The abuses, said to be mainly perpetrated by Indian troops of the Border Security Force (BSF), continue despite criticisms from human rights groups.

Last December, an 81-page report titled "Trigger Happy: Excessive Use of Force by Indian Troops at the Bangladesh Border" by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch found numerous cases of indiscriminate use of force, arbitrary detention, torture, and killings by the BSF. But very few of the cases were investigated and none of the perpetrators punished.

The BSF guards the Indian side of the border, is better armed and outnumbers its Bangladesh counterpart known as Border Guards Bangladesh (previously Bangladesh Rifles or the BDR).

These two forces are tasked with guarding the porous 4,096-km border, including more than 1,100 kms in the southern part of India’s West Bengal, which has its share of child smugglers.

One of them is Raju Barman, who lives near the border town of Hili in South Dinajpur district in West Bengal. "I have to avoid the eyes of four to five Indian border guards every day to take my consignment to the other side," says Barman, a fifth grade dropout. "I earn 70 rupees (1.5 dollars)."

Barman explains he delivers Indian goods to his Bangladeshi counterpart, a boy named Selim, on the other side of the border, and makes as many as five trips on any given day. And then he would also take Bangladeshi goods from Selim to sell in India, although Indian goods are more in demand on the other side. "We are often caught and get beaten up, but we still go. We are poor," says Barman.

While the BSF usually lets the younger boys go after roughing them up, the teenaged boys and young women in the trade are vulnerable to sexual assault too, rights activists say.

Authorities in Bangladesh acknowledge the abuses on the border but admit to helplessness. "We know of the trafficking and the child carriers, but our resources are limited," says Mohammad Nurul Amin, the Jessore district magistrate and deputy commissioner.

"We are offering some monetary support for families to send their children to school and (also) offering free books," he says.

On the Indian side, the BSF’s new South Bengal Inspector General Ashok Kumar says they are also encouraging children to go back to school.

"We are also adopting one school under every border outpost to bring the children back to school and provide them facilities," Kumar says.

But asked about the abuses, Kumar, who had been commended for his humane approach to problems in previous postings, could only say, "I will try to find out the truth and see what can be done."

A senior BSF official requesting anonymity says unless the governments of both countries take up the issue, nothing can be done to stop the violation of child rights.

"The big bosses are not paying serious attention to the problem. If they are not serious about stopping smuggling, they should make it an open border," the official says. "It is a tragedy of the system." The volume of trade in the border areas is substantial. A Central Law Commission Report in India back in 2000 said illegal trade between India and Bangladesh was around five billion dollars. Official trade between the two countries amounts to less than three billion dollars.

Locals allege that border guards of the two countries are in cahoots with smuggling syndicates. Human rights activists say the border is dotted with illegal "ghats" (ports) through which smuggling takes place. Every ghat has an owner or group of owners called "ghat maliks" (port owners) controlling the trade. Ghat maliks, activists say, are shadowy figures that appear to be connected with powerful and influential people.

The goods smuggled from the Indian side are mostly cattle, fruits, fertilisers, pesticide, salt, spices, sugar, and "bidi" (hand rolled local cheap cigars). Then there are also medicines and narcotics, such as the popular intoxicant Phensedyl, a cough syrup Bangladeshis drink as liquor. Other goods include garments, electronic equipment (often those which reach India from China), DVDs, and motorcycle engines.

Smuggled from the Bangladesh side are usually fish, oil, mobile handsets and soaps besides gold, fake currency, metals and small arms.

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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PHILIPPINES: Pulling Children Out of the Tunnel of Hard Labour

April 14, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Kara Santos

MANILA, Apr 14, 2011 (IPS) – At the tender age of 10, Rodel Morozco was working in a goldmine and crawling inside tunnels, until one day he fell 200 feet underground because his father had blasted the tunnel with dynamite.

"I had to run and get out but it was too dark," said Morozco, who worked the mines in Camarines Norte province in Bicol, one of the Philippines’ poorest regions. "I felt so miserable, and then I realised that I did not like what I was doing. I just wanted to go back to school."

Now 25, Morozco managed to overcome adversity as a child labourer by finishing his education, courtesy of a scholarship from the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

"The scholarship gave me a chance to leave the dark tunnel," Morozco said during a press conference organised by the ILO. "When I graduated, I dreamt of finding a decent job and helping other children to get out of child labour."

There are at least 2.4 million Filipino children going through what Morozco experienced 15 years ago, says ILO country director Lawrence Jeff Johnson, citing data from the Philippine Labour Force Survey as of April 2010. ILO estimates there were 215 million child labourers globally in 2010.

The number of Filipino child workers has decreased from the four million aged 5 to 17 engaged in economic activity during the period October 2000 to September 2001, according to the Philippines’ National Statistics Office (NSO) and ILO’s Survey on Children in 2001.

But many more child labourers are prone to end up as dropouts. "Children that combine work with school often drop out, as child labour interferes with their learning. And children who have poor access to education often work to meet immediate family needs, and for lack of a better alternative," said Johnson.

ILO data reveals that the dropout rate for elementary students in the Philippines has increased over the last three years, rising from an average 5.99 percent from 2007 to 2008 to 6.28 percent in 2009 to 2010.

Johnson also pointed out that the global economic crisis had an impact on efforts to reduce poverty globally, and increased vulnerable employment.

"The root cause is still poverty," says Lourdes Trasmonte, undersecretary of the Department of Labour and Employment (DOLE). "Children are brought in to work because that is the only asset the family has."

More than 18,000 children, mostly aged 10 to 14 years old, work in the mining and quarrying industries alone in the Philippines, according to NSO data.

Aside from being exposed to dust and mercury-based chemicals in mines, which can cause serious brain damage, child labourers in the mining industry often become stunted as a result of carrying excessively heavy loads.

Morozco said he toiled eight to 12 hours everyday as a child labourer. When not inside a tunnel, he was under the heat of the sun, his back bent sifting sand and rock for gold in a heavy wooden pan, using toxic mercury. This he did in the river, which is why his hands were soaked in muddy water every day.

"I was so tired, so weak since I had to work at night and go to school the next day," said Morozco, who had nine other siblings. "I reached a point where in I had to work full time when my parents could not afford to send me to school any more."

Other hazardous forms of child labour include deep-sea fishing, work in the pyrotechnics industry and plantations, domestic help and the flesh trade.

The plantation sector is said to have the highest number of child labourers at over two million, of which 1.4 million are below 15 years old, according to the NSO.

In 2001, the agriculture industry employed about 2.3 million or 60 percent of the total number of working children 5 to 17 years old, according to NSO and ILO statistics.

In 2010, the Philippine Government issued a Progress Report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which found that poverty and education are two key areas where the country is not making enough headway. The Progress Report warned that the Philippines was unlikely to achieve universal access to elementary education (MDG2) if factors such as child labour were not tackled.

To curb the worst forms of child labour, including slavery and commercial sexual exploitation, ILO has been working with government agencies such as the DOLE.

ILO’s project, the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), seeks to remove children caught in the worst forms of employment by providing their parents with the opportunity to earn and support other members of the family with alternative sources of income.

"If the parents have work and social services are accessible to them, the children can be removed from child labour," DOLE’s Trasmonte told media.

IPEC projects areas include the agricultural province of Quezon, where the Department of Education is deploying "mobile teachers" in remote areas to educate children who stop schooling during the harvest season. In Bukidnon, a province known for its sugar plantations, IPEC will set up a community school for indigenous and tribal peoples.

Morozco himself escaped the fate of other child labourers, after becoming a child advocate at an ILO summer youth camp ten years ago. Through an IPEC endorsement, he got a full scholarship from high school to college, where he took a computer programming course.

Now working as a staff member for a senator in Manila, Morozco still regularly goes back to his hometown to speak out against child labour.

"If we allow children to work, then they will remain uneducated. If child labourers do not get a chance to return to school, then nothing will happen to this country because they are the future of this nation," Morozco said.

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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Bloggers Track Down China’s Lost Boys

March 10, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Gordon Ross

BEIJING, Mar 10, 2011 (IPS) – Peng Gaofeng spent three years looking for his abducted son, launching an Internet campaign that eventually drew 300,000 followers. Last month, Peng was reunited with his son, and the 34-year-old has vowed to help the thousands of Chinese parents who are still trying to find their missing children.

“I’ve found my son, but I’ll never stop helping parents who have lost theirs,” says Peng, who was reunited with his son, Wenle, after one of his followers reported sighting the boy begging on the streets of Pizhou, Jiangsu province, more than 800 miles away from his family home in Shenzhen. “I know how much they are grieving. They lost track of their children for one tiny moment, and they are now missing. Probably forever.”

Thousands of children of migrant workers are missing in China, many snatched from Shenzhen and other coastal boomtowns with massive floating populations. Due to a historical Chinese preference for males, most of China’s stolen children are boys, who are sold by traffickers for as much as 10,000 dollars.

Although some children are sold to buyers in Singapore, Malaysia and elsewhere in Asia, most are ‘purchased’ domestically by families, primarily in rural areas in the south of China, by people who are either childless or without a male heir. Some of these children are forced by their captors to work as beggars.

According to the All-China Women’s Federation, the largest women’s NGO in China, cases of abduction and trafficking of women and children have been rising in recent years. Between January and July 2010, Chinese courts of all levels handled over 1,200 cases of abducted women and children, a 45 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.

Chinese censors rarely allow news of child abductions, and published reports are often upbeat stories of police breaking child trafficking rings. The case of Peng Wenle, however, became a nationwide sensation, covered by state media and repeated widely online.

The boy’s high-profile reunion with his family coincides with another nationwide child-find campaign launched by Yu Jianrong, professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The campaign began when Yu received a letter from a distraught mother whose child had been kidnapped. The letter told the story of Yang Weixin, a six-year-old boy from Quanzhou, Fujian province, who disappeared in 2009 and was forced to beg on the streets by his captors.

Yu called on Chinese Internet users to submit photos of child beggars to microblog forums belonging to QQ and Sina, popular Chinese news portals. Once posted, the photos could be compared with police records or recognised by parents. As the movement gathered steam, QQ launched a page called “Baby Return Home” linked to the microblog group.

Within three weeks of Yu’s initial call to action, more than 1,800 photographs had been shared through the microblog groups and four children had been identified, according to Information Times, a spin-off of Guangzhou Daily. One volunteer developed an application that allowed people to upload photos directly from their mobile phones to a database.

Chen Shiqu, head of the China Public Security Bureau’s Child Abduction Office, voiced his support for the campaign on his own microblog. A number of delegates at the National People’s Congress, which began last week in Beijing, said they were planning to submit a proposal on the issue of child abduction.

Chen also noted that the central government launched its own national initiative to fight abduction and human trafficking in April 2009, according to China Youth Daily. So far, 6,785 children and 11,839 women have been rescued, the newspaper said.

Government critics say punishments for kidnapping and human trafficking are too weak. Anyone caught forcing disabled people or children to beg in China can be fined and sentenced to no more than three years in prison. If the circumstances are considered “serious”, the violator can be put up in jail for no more than seven years.

Kidnappers and human traffickers can receive between five and ten years in prison, plus a fine. Leaders of gangs engaged in the abduction and trafficking of women and children can be sentenced to death, as can people who abduct or traffic three or more women and children.

Hu Xingdou, professor of economics and Chinese society at the Beijing Institute of Technology, says that while the microblogs can be useful in finding missing children, they are not the whole solution. He says the government should strengthen laws that prohibit children from panhandling and take a more active role in tracking missing children.

“The government’s own campaign is just taking on a passive role,” Hu tells IPS. “If someone reports (a missing child), the government will take some action. If no one reports a kid is missing, they won’t do anything. The government launches a new campaign against abducting and trafficking women and children every year, but if the government was really doing an excellent job, there would be no need for a new campaign every year.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Crime, Featured, Human Rights Tagged With: ,

ARGENTINA: Trial over Baby Theft Opens at Last

March 1, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 28, 2011 (IPS) – After 35 years of campaigning and legal action by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the first trial over the systematic theft of babies of political prisoners during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship began Monday.

"It was sad and even repugnant to see the apathy and indifference of the accused, who dozed off while the prosecutor’s report was read out," 91-year-old Rosa Roisinblit, vice president of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the organisation that brought the charges, told IPS after the first day of the trial in a Buenos Aires court.

In the dock are former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, 85; the last head of the military junta, Reynaldo Bignone, 83; five prominent army, navy and coast guard officers; and one civilian doctor.

The eight defendants face charges of "taking, retaining, hiding and changing the identities of" 34 children born to political prisoners held in clandestine prisons during the dictatorship.

The opening session of the trial, which could last more than eight months, was attended by representatives of human rights groups, survivors of the "dirty war" against dissidents, and relatives of the victims.

Some 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the seven-year dictatorship, according to human rights organisations.

Videla was brought into court in handcuffs because he is serving a life sentence for other crimes against humanity. But as the prosecutor’s report was read, the former dictator dozed off, with his head on another defendant’s shoulder.

"We have no doubt that there is more than enough evidence to prove that this was a systematic plan to steal children," said Roisinblit, who hopes the defendants will be sentenced to life in prison.

Roisinblit’s only daughter, Patricia, was eight months pregnant when she was kidnapped in 1978. Patricia’s husband, José Pérez, was also forcibly disappeared, and they left behind a 15-month-old daughter, who was raised by her grandparents.

The toddler, Mariana Pérez, is now 34. It was not until 11 years ago that she found out that her mother had given birth to a baby boy, Guillermo Pérez, in the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), the regime’s largest and most notorious torture centre.

In 2000, the young man was located by the Grandmothers. He had been raised by a civilian employee of the air force, who had taken the baby and changed his name. Roisinblit is now a defendant in the case, accompanied by her two grandchildren.

The Grandmothers emerged in the late 1970s, during the dictatorship, as a breakaway group of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, which was founded to demand that their missing sons and daughters be returned to them alive.

The specific focus of the Grandmothers was to track down their lost grandchildren, who were either born in captivity or kidnapped as babies or toddlers and illegally adopted by military or civilian families after their parents had been forcibly disappeared.

In recent years, grown siblings of the missing children have joined in the task, setting up their own networks to reach out to young people still living under the false identities they were given.

The Grandmothers estimate that some 500 babies or toddlers were stolen during the dictatorship. Some of them were presumably killed.

A total of 102 youngsters have been found. Most of them were raised by military families. But some were adopted in good faith by couples who did not know their history.

Of the 34 cases included in the trial that got underway Monday, some of the young people are still missing and others have regained their real identities. Among those not yet found is the grandson of the president of Grandmothers, Estela de Carlotto.

The youngsters who have been reunited with their biological families include the granddaughter of famous poet Juan Gelman, Macarena Gelman, who was found in 2000; Buenos Aires city lawmaker Juan Cabandié, who was born in ESMA; and human rights activist and national legislator Victoria Donda.

The former junta members were tried in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison. Later, the legal action brought against thousands of lower-ranking members of the security forces sparked army revolts and heavy military pressure against the still-fragile democracy, which prompted the adoption of two amnesty laws in 1986 and 1987. The former military commanders were pardoned and released in 1989 and 1990 by presidential decree.

After the pardons, no member of the military was imprisoned for human rights violations until the late 1990s, when the Grandmothers brought the charges for baby theft — a crime that was not covered by the pardons or the amnesty laws.

Other human rights trials were resumed after the amnesty laws were overturned in 2005 and the pardons were struck down in 2007.

It took 14 years for the baby theft trial against Videla and the other officers to open. "Since we started, there have been many new developments and discoveries," said Roisinblit.

Besides Videla and Bignone, the defendants in the trial that began Monday are former army general Santiago Riveros, former admirals Antonio Vañek and Rubén Franco, former navy captain Jorge Acosta, former coast guard officer Juan Antonio Azic, and a doctor who worked at ESMA, Jorge Magnacco.

Four others accused in the case have died since the charges were brought: former admiral Emilio Massera, former police chief Juan Sasiain, former coast guard officer Héctor Febres and former army chief Cristino Nicolaides.

At the start of the trial, which is being aired on television, prosecutor Federico Delgado’s report was read out. The document stated that although "births took place" in every clandestine detention and torture centre in the country, there were "strategic centres" that operated as "maternity wards," complete with birthing rooms and nurseries.

These included ESMA, in the capital, Campo de Mayo, a military base 30 km from downtown Buenos Aires, and at least six other illegal prisons that operated in military and police installations.

Delgado said in his report that this "is not just another case," but one that reveals "one of the darkest episodes in Argentine history" of "systematic violence by the state."

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Human Rights, Justice, Latin America, Report Tagged With: ,

ARGENTINA: Pockets of Child Malnutrition Despite Economic Boom

February 22, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 21, 2011 (IPS) – Despite years of strong economic growth, record harvests and massive social assistance programmes, there are still places in Argentina untouched by the boom, where child malnutrition has even claimed lives.

Hunger and malnutrition affect 53 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, including nearly nine million children under five, according to United Nations statistics.

Argentina is not one of the countries with the most serious problems of malnutrition, like Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala and Bolivia.

But the question is that this country, once known as the "bread basket" of South America, produces enough food to feed its population of 40 million 10 times over.

The Argentine economy has grown at a rate of seven to 10 percent a year since 2003, with the exception of 2009, when growth dipped as a result of the global economic crisis.

In that period, the country has also seen bumper harvests of grains and other crops, while the centre-left governments of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and his wife, President Cristina Fernández, who succeeded him, implemented massive income transfer and food assistance programmes targeting poor children and adolescents.

But the Health Ministry reports that 750,000 children and teenagers under 18 still have problems of under-nutrition.

A little more than a year after the creation of a cash transfer programme to poor families with children under 18, experts are debating the reach, positive impacts and limitations of the subsidy.

The universal child benefit, which went into effect in December 2009, provides a monthly payment of 220 pesos (55 dollars) per child to parents who are unemployed, work in the informal economy or are domestic workers — in other words, all parents who do not have access to the government’s family allowance scheme that already covered workers in the formal economy.

The benefit, which reaches 3.5 million children, is conditional on school attendance and regular medical check-ups and vaccinations.

A family can receive the subsidy for up to five children — an amount that is close to the official minimum monthly wage.

However, the plan is not actually universal: 2.8 million children and teenagers are not covered by it, for different reasons.

Sociologist Gabriela Agosto, director of the Asociación Civil Observatorio Social, told IPS that the universal child benefit "is an incentive for education and health care, but does not substantially modify access to food.

"The benefit generates a transfer of income, but in and of itself it does not correct a key deficit, child malnutrition, because chronic poverty cannot be turned around with this alone: targeted policies are needed," she said.

Agosto referred to the cases of severe malnutrition and even deaths among indigenous children that are periodically reported in provinces in northern Argentina like Salta, Formosa, Chaco and Misiones, the country’s poorest provinces.

When the sociologist argued with the governor of one of these provinces, who asserted that the problem of malnutrition in the most isolated indigenous communities was "cultural," she challenged him to adopt specific policies targeting those communities.

"Of course in terms of sheer numbers, our problem pales in comparison to countries of Africa, or even other Latin American nations. But considering that Argentina is a producer of food and has been growing for the past eight years, under-nutrition is inadmissible," she said.

The expert cited a recent string of conferences on the universal child benefit, where anthropologist Patricia Aguirre, a specialist in food, noted that while the monthly payment improves access to food, it is not a food policy.

The presentations by the experts taking part in the conferences were published in book form. In her presentation, Aguirre pointed out that the universal child benefit went to the entire family, not just the children, and was used not only to buy food but to pay for cooking gas, clothes, transportation and school supplies.

The universal child benefit "is very significant, very important," the expert said. But she warned that it could actually aggravate malnutrition, by increasing consumption of carbohydrates, soft drinks, candy and other high-sugar foods.

Another social activist concerned about the pockets of malnutrition in Argentina is Juan Carr, head of the Red Solidaria (Solidarity Network), who believes that with a concerted effort, Argentina could completely eradicate hunger in one to three years.

"With just four days worth of the annual grain harvest, without even mentioning the animal protein derived from beef or dairy products that we also produce, we could solve the problem of hunger in Argentina," he told IPS. "And with 122 days worth, we could solve the problem in Latin America as a whole."

Carr said social awareness has grown over the last 15 years and that more people in the middle and upper classes today believe it is a disgrace that hunger and malnutrition are still problems in Argentina.

That means there is interest and willingness to put an end to the problem, said Carr. And in his view, that social conscience is more important than political will, because the actions of governments respond to demands from and consensus among people.

According to statistics compiled by the Red Solidaria from different sources, the number of children under six who die of malnutrition-related causes has dropped sharply since the late 2001 economic collapse.

"To reach a Pilagá indigenous mother who has seven children and a husband who doesn’t work and is violent, the universal child benefit is not enough; what are needed are sound policies that take the problem as a whole into account," in all its complexity, Carr said.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2010.

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