Undernutrition prevalent among Indonesian children: Unicef
Undernutrition prevalent among Indonesian children: Unicef
JAKARTA (JP): Undernutrition is prevalent among Indonesian children and a cause for serious concern, the United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) said yesterday.
"The nutrition level of about nine million children, or 40 percent Indonesia's total children, still needs serious attention from the government, non-governmental organizations and many others," Unicef chief representative Stephen J. Woodhouse said from his Jakarta office.
"Children with low nutrition levels will find it difficult to concentrate at school," he said on the occasion of a new Unicef report on the state of children worldwide, including in Indonesia.
According to Unicef data, 60 percent of the infant mortality rate in Indonesia is caused by undernutrition, he said.
Woodhouse said Unicef runs child survival projects in nine provinces in Indonesia, including Central Java, East Java and West Java -- the three provinces with the highest prevalence of poverty. The other six provinces are all in eastern Indonesia; East Nusa Tenggara, East Timor, Irian, Maluku, South Sulawesi, and West Nusa Tenggara.
Unicef has allocated funds of US$72 million for all its projects in Indonesia until 2000.
If Indonesia wants to compete with other countries, it should give more attention to the development of its children if it is to have good human resources in the future, he said.
Unicef is cooperating with the Indonesian Council of Ulemas, 24 non-governmental organizations and the mass media to disseminate information about the need to pay greater attention to the development of children.
Yesterday, Unicef's Regional Director of East Asia and Pacific, Pratima Kale, launched the State of the World's Children 1996 report, which sets out a three-year agenda for the UN body to help protect children facing armed conflicts.
"It is the singular characteristic of warfare in our time that children suffer most. Wars are not going to disappear but we can at least mitigate their effects and ensure that they do not target children," said Kale.
"To that end, this anti-war agenda sets out a series of steps that we believe to be both realistic and effective and that would dramatically improve the well-being of children in situations of conflict," Kale said.
The 10-point, action oriented anti-war agenda is comprised of concrete measures to alleviate the impact of warfare on children. The 10 areas addressed are: prevention, girls and women, child soldiers, land mines, war crimes, children as 'zones of peace', sanctions, emergency relief, rehabilitation, and education for peace.
One of the most disturbing aspects of recent conflicts is the "frightening escalation" in the use of children as soldiers, she said. "Recently, boys and girls under the age of 16 have participated in conflicts in 25 countries, either as army aides or combatants."
She pointed out that wars have taken a horrifying toll on children in the past decade. They include two million killed, four to five million disabled, 12 million made homeless, more than one million orphaned or separated from parents, some 10 million psychologically traumatized by violence, and legions of survivors who have yet to experience peace in their lifetime. (31)