2011 UNICEF report: save our teenagers

In the last ten years the global community has helped lower infant mortality by some 26%.

Whilst nations must not be complacent about this ongoing challenge UNICEF are now asking world leaders to pay some attention to the poorest adolescents in the world. By focusing on the poorest adolescents aged between 10 -19 years old, they argue that the entrenched cycles of poverty and inequity can be broken.

“Adolescence is a pivot point – an opportunity to consolidate the gains we have made in early childhood or risk seeing those gains wiped out,” said Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director. “We need to focus more attention now on reaching adolescents - especially adolescent girls - investing in education, health and other measures to engage them in the process of improving their own lives.”

88% of the world’s adolescents (1.2 billion) live in developing countries. The harsh realities they face include HIV, little prospects if jobs, teenage gang murders, poor health, domestic violence, and having children very young.

In Brazil for example one third of HIV cases are teenagers and the murder rate for adolescents in the last decade was a staggering 81,000.

With developing countries also being hit hardest both by the global economic down turn and global warming it is incumbent on the developed countries to help ensure these young men and women, not only don’t fall further behind, but also have the building blocks to escape the worst aspects of poverty and deprivation.

Simon Woolley