Schools closed, growing poverty, forced marriages and depression: after a year of pandemic, all the indicators that measure child and adolescent development have receded, a setback that heralds a lasting stigma for an entire generation, UNICEF warned this Thursday.
“The number of children who are hungry, isolated, abused, anxious, living in poverty and forced to marry has increased,” said Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund ( Unicef), in a statement issued one year after the World Health Organization declared the covid-19 pandemic.
“Their access to education, socialization and essential services including health, nutrition and protection has diminished. The signs that children will bear the scars of the pandemic for years to come are unmistakable,” Fore said in the note.
Faced with such “devastating” effects, the Unicef board urged putting children “at the center of recovery efforts,” in particular “prioritizing schools in reopening plans.”
Unicef cited a number of troubling figures in support of Fore’s remarks.
While the pandemic has hit older adults mostly, children and adolescents under the age of 20 account for 13% of the 71 million coronavirus cases reported in the 107 countries that provided age-specific data.
In developing countries, projections show a 15% increase in child poverty.
Between six and seven million more children could suffer from malnutrition in 2020, a 14% increase that could translate into more than 10,000 additional deaths per month, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
For 168 million students in the world, schools have been closed for almost a year. One third of them do not have access to online education.
As a result of school closings and the worsening economic situation, the pandemic could also lead to the marriage of 10 million boys by 2030, adding to the 100 million girls already considered at risk of marriage by then.
In addition, at least one in seven children or adolescents has spent most of the past year under confinement orders, increasing anxiety, depression and isolation.
On the other hand, the coronavirus has also caused the suspension of vaccination campaigns against other diseases, such as measles, in 26 countries, increasing the threats to the health of those not immunized.
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