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.
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