Category: New Zealand NGOs

Source: Save The Children

Anuska, a child activist from Nepal with Saathi the Air Bear. Photo credit: Save the Children 

UNITED NATIONS, 13 Sept 2023 –A giant white teddy bear has travelled from Nepal to New York with a child campaigner to draw attention to the impact of air pollution on children and push world leaders attending the global goals summit to take action to protect children’s futures.  

The bear, known as Saathi the “Air Bear” in Nepal, has been travelling with climate activists around Nepal in a truck for the past six months to highlight the impact of air pollution. 

Saathi, which means ‘friend or buddy’ in Nepali, had the colour of its fur monitored over its journey while meeting policymakers, entertainers and visiting schools and. During its journey, Saathi’s fur has gone from a bright white to a dark grey.  

The bear will be accompanied at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Action Weekend in New York by child activist, 17-year-old Anuska, who will speak about the pressing need for substantive progress by governments to advance the globally agreed goals, including the goal to protect the planet so it can support present and future generations.  

The latest update of the Air Quality Life Index from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago estimated that air pollution is the most significant threat to human health in Nepal, reducing life expectancy by 4.6 years on average. Nepal is ranked as the third most polluted country globally after Bangladesh and India. Air pollution is also linked to respiratory diseases, heart problems, and even cognitive impairment in children. 

Saathi was unstuffed before being packed into a suitcase and travelling over 12,000 km (7,500 miles) with Anuska from Kathmandu to New York, the longest journey yet for both bear and activist.  

Anuska’s journey as a climate activist began at the age of 13 when her love of nature and her mother’s involvement in social work and environmental activities inspired her to take action to combat the climate crisis. She started participating in conferences and Model United Nations events, eventually winning a National Speech Competition on the topic of youth and children’s roles in climate action.  

In the lead up to the summit, Anuska said: 

“Children are among the most vulnerable groups to the climate crisis, and we need to discuss how climate change imperils children’s rights and the prospects of future generations. Our future hangs in the balance due to climate change. 

My message at the SDG Summit will underscore the significance of world leaders attuning themselves to the lived experiences of children, rather than basing their decisions on perspectives unfamiliar to children.”  

Ayush Joshi, Director for Advocacy, Campaigns, Communications, and Media (ACCM) at Save the Children in Nepal, said:  

“The post-COVID-19 era has witnessed setbacks in achieving many of the sustainable development targets. Despite commendable governmental efforts, we believe that all stakeholders must break away from ‘business as usual’ and commit to urgent transformative changes. This shift is vital to dismantle the structural and political barriers that have obstructed progress toward realizing the ambitious agenda agreed to by governments in 2015.  

“We look forward to the SDG Summit embracing a renewed commitment to expediting progress toward the SDGs, especially in collaboration that prioritizes the well-being of children, that too, with and for children.” 

The Air Bear initiative is part of Save the Children’s ”Generation Hope’ campaign that aims to raise awareness of the impact of the climate crisis that is threatening the future, survival, learning, and safety of children. 

Save the Children helped shape the SDGs and the accompanying 2030 Agenda, which recognizes children as agents of change. The SDGs were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 to provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At their heart was an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership.  

 

ENDS 

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Source: Save The Children

Zeinab*, 9, needs leg surgery but her permit was recently denied. More content here.

[Mohammed Nayef/ Save the Children]

Gaza, 13 September – Nearly 400 children in Gaza – or at least two children a day – were denied permits to go to the West Bank for critical healthcare in the first six months of 2023, leaving them without access to life-saving surgery or urgent medication, said Save the Children.

Nearly 100 children’s applications to Israeli authorities were denied or left unanswered in the month of May alone, when hostilities escalated between Israel and armed groups in Gaza, leaving 33 Palestinians, including at least seven children, and two people in Israel dead. 

According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, during the escalation of hostilities between 9 and 13 May 2023, hundreds of patients and their caregivers were unable to reach vital medical care in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or in Israel.

Last year, three children died while their applications for Gaza exit-permits were either denied or remained under review, including a 19-month-old child with a congenital heart defect and a 16-year-old child with leukaemia.

Neither chemotherapy nor radiology treatments are available due to Israeli Government restrictions on medical equipment and medication entering Gaza.

Zeinab*, nine years old, underwent surgery three times in Gaza between the age of one and three to treat nerve damage in her leg, a condition she has from birth. All three surgeries were unsuccessful, and her family has tried for over a year to get a permit for her and a caregiver to travel for treatment outside Gaza.

“I felt very bad when my application was denied. It was during Eid, I really wanted to go and play with my friends. I wish I could run and wear trousers,’ she said. ‘The device they fit on my leg hurts when I walk, when I go to school. I hope I can have it removed. I am a child, and I wish to be treated like other children.”

Her grandmother Maryam* said: “I often find Zeinab crying, she tells me she’s in pain, that she wishes she could have this device removed and play and dress up. Why doesn’t she have a right to medical treatment like any other girl?”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), treatment and diagnostic services for cancer comprised the single largest reason for patient permit requests to exit the Gaza Strip for 2019 to 2021.

During the same period, 32% of children with approved permits to travel for health care from the Gaza Strip did not have a parent approved to accompany them, resulting in them traveling with a different relative or not travelling at all.

Gaza’s health system remains on the brink of collapse after 16 years of blockade. Along with recurrent escalations of violence, this poses a constant threat to children’s lives in Gaza; the restrictions imposed under the blockade contribute to increasing poverty rates and health supplement shortages in the local markets.

According to a recent Save the Children survey, malnutrition is dominant among families living in ‘access restricted areas’ that are close to the Israeli fence and witness frequent attacks, lack access to basic needs, suffer from poor public infrastructure and a history of waterborne diseases and solid waste pollution. 10% of families surveyed by Save the Children reported losing a child due to a preventable cause before the age of 5.

The May 2023 escalation highlighted the urgent need for humanitarian assistance in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Two thirds of the way through the year, only a third of the $502 million required in the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan has been funded.

Jason Lee, Save the Children’s Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory said:

“Despite approval rates for medical permits increasing this year, there is still an average of 60 children every month who need medical treatment outside Gaza and whose applications are rejected or left unanswered. Some are desperately sick children who have no options other than leaving Gaza to survive.

Denying children healthcare is inhumane and an infringement of their rights[1], and separating children from their parents during treatment can make it even harder for those children to cope.

The 16-year blockade is impacting every aspect of children’s lives, including their physical and mental health. Our research in 2022 showed that four out of five children in the Gaza Strip live with depression, grief and fear. Their reality is so far removed from the things we associate with childhood. This systemic violence and deprivation have to stop.”

Save the Children is calling on the Government of Israel to end the blockade of Gaza as it is the root cause of ongoing violations of the most fundamental rights of children.

As per the legal obligations of an occupying power[2], the Government of Israel should take every step possible to protect Gaza patients, promote unhindered access to essential healthcare, and uphold the right to health and healthcare for Gaza’s children and their families. 

-ENDS

[1] The right of the child to health is enshrined in article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that children have the right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health and access to health care services.

[1] Human Rights Council Resolution (April 2023)

Notes to Editors 

• According to WHO data, between January-June 2023, 1,746 patients of which 373 children had their applications rejected or delayed. The total number of applications for children was 2,789, of which 2,416 were approved and 373 rejected or delayed. This means an average of 60 children’s applications were unsuccessful each month. 
• In July 2023, Save the Children conducted a study on nutrition in Gaza, using qualitative and quantitative tools: 322 mothers from five geographic locations in Gaza Strip were surveyed, and two focus group discussions were held with 63 parents of children who were diagnosed with malnutrition. All respondents lived in areas that are classified as Access Restricted Areas (ARA) which lack basic infrastructure services due to their closeness to the Israeli fence. Residents of these areas lack access to basic services including health and nutrition. 73% of responding families reported that the main barrier for them to reach a health centre is the long distance.  
• Save the Children works with Al Mezan, an independent, non-governmental human rights organization based in the Gaza Strip since 2014. Save the Children provides support and legal aid to child medical patients to overturn denial or delay of exit permit application to access medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip.  

For more information, please contact:

Randa Ghazy, randa.ghazy@savethechildren.org/ +44 7429 980 655

Out-of-hours: Media@savethechildren.org.uk / +44 7831 650 409

Source: Save The Children

• Leaders to meet on 18-19 September for the 2023 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit in New York.
• The Summit marks the mid-way point towards the 2030 deadline for achieving the goals, and aims to prompt a new wave of high-level political commitment on actions.

UNITED NATIONS, 12 September 2023 – The world is wildly off track to meet the 17 United Nations global goals by 2030, putting the lives and futures of millions of children at risk unless leaders make concrete plans to accelerate progress, Save the Children said as it launched a new data  tool to highlight child inequality.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a blueprint of 17 goals agreed by all 193 United Nations (UN) Member States in 2015 to transform our world for the better – have reached their midpoint of implementation, yet barely one in 10 of their requirements are on track to be met by 2030.

Data from the children’s rights agency’s new visualisation tool, the Child Atlas – childatlas.org –  shows that 392 million of the 922 million children – or two in every five – starting school over the next seven years will not be able to read and understand a simple text by age 10². With Goal 4 focused on ensuring all children receive a quality education, this statistic reveals how the majority of the world’s children will continue to miss out unless leaders take drastic action to course correct.

Based on current rates of progress, Save the Children’s Child Atlas also projects that over the next 7 years – or the time left for the world to achieve the 17 SDGs –

• 31.6 million of the 942 million babies born between now and 2029 will not survive to celebrate their 5th birthday³.
• Malnutrition will leave more than 1 in 5  babies born stunted⁴.
• Of the 414 million girls who will finish primary school by 2030, 67 million will marry before turning 18⁵. 
• 2.6 billion – or 4 in 5 – children will experience at least one extreme climate event⁶.

The Child Atlas, launched today, can be used to generate new statistics measuring global progress against several of the goal indicators.  The Child Atlas also allows users to explore the different ways inequality affects children’s lives, understand the relationship between different factors, and hear how children describe the problems they are facing.  

In light of these devastating findings, Save the Children is urging world leaders meeting at the SDG Summit in New York on 18-19 September to generate renewed commitments supported by concrete plans to accelerate progress toward the SDGs. The agency is calling on leaders to turn promises into action, work both for and with children, and unlock the finance needed to deliver the SDGs and invest in services and systems that put the needs and rights of children first.

Inger Ashing, Save the Children International CEO, said:

“If the Sustainable Development Goals are achieved, the world in 2030 will look markedly different to the one we live in now. There’d be no extreme poverty anywhere, gender equality achieved, inequality reduced, and urgent action taken to combat climate change.

“However, with less than seven years left, children are experiencing multiple, overlapping crises like we’ve never seen before. Hunger, conflict, inequality, poverty and the climate crises threaten children’s survival, protection and right to learn. The SDGs are the best framework we have for charting a way out of this moment of crisis to build a greener, fairer planet for all children.

“Child participation is critical for successfully achieving the SDGs and ultimately children’s rights. It is also a child’s right to have their views heard and participate in public decision-making on issues that affect their lives.

“Data to understand the situation is crucial: it helps policy makers make better decisions and allocate resources effectively. By including disaggregated data on many key indicators, our new Child Atlas includes crucial data to allow world leaders and civil society to better understand why certain groups of children are falling behind, how the intersecting experiences of inequality and discrimination are impacting progress toward the SDGs, and to monitor rates of improvement.”

Save the Children helped shape the SDGs and the accompanying 2030 Agenda, which recognizes children as agents of change. The SDGs were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 to provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At their heart was an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership.

Save the Children is also supporting children’s participation and inclusion at the Summit, including a planned “Message in a Bottle” stunt drawing on children’s engagement during the Children’s Week of Action.  

NOTES:

[1] The Child Atlas is a new data platform to visualise, compare, analyse and understand children’s outcomes globally. National, subnational, and local data on key child development outcomes across multiple thematic areas are integrated in one publicly available platform, complemented by data on risks and crises, public policies and financing decisions, and other contextual information. The Child Atlas integrates the most recent data from a range of publicly available data sources, including UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, the World Bank, as well as data curated by civil society organisations and academia.

[2] We project learning poverty (percentage of children at the end-of-primary age who are below minimum reading proficiency adjusted by out-of-school children) based on World Bank data for 122 countries covering both learning deprivation (children who are below minimum reading proficiency) as well as schooling deprivation (out-of-school rates). We also use out-of-school rates from UNESCO for further 53 countries, covering in total ca. 90% of children. To estimate schooling deprivation in the future, we use trend data on children out-of-primary school to calculate the annual rate of reduction observed in the past. Due to data limitations, we do not project changes in the learning deprivation over the next few years and instead use the latest available information for each country (imputing averages based on income level and world regions for countries where this information is missing). We believe this is a reasonable assumption which likely underestimates the real problem, as previous simulation models suggested that learning poverty may sharply increase after the Covid-19 pandemic because of long school closures and ineffective remote learning attempts.  We assume that children start primary school at age 6, as this is the most common case across the world. Number of children age 6 between 2023 and 2029 are based on UN Population Prospects 2022.  

[3] Under-five mortality (probability of a child dying before they reach their fifth birthday, per 1,000 live births) for 200 countries based on estimates up to 2021 by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNICEF/WHO/UN/World Bank). Future trends are calculated using the annual rate of reduction observed in the past. Number of births between 2023 and 2029 are based on UN Population Prospects 2022.

[4] We project stunting (percentage of children under 5 years of age who are too short for their age) based on estimates up to 2022 presented in the Joint Malnutrition Estimates (UNICEF/WHO/ World Bank). The dataset covers 159 countries where 99% of stunting cases take place. Future trends are calculated using the annual rate of reduction observed in the past. As stunting rates are reported as average for children age 0-4 years, we apply projections to each cohort in the year they are expected to reach age 2.  Number of children age 0 between 2023 and 2029 are based on UN Population Prospects 2022. This number varies from the number of births due to infant mortality. 

[5] We project child marriage (percentage of women aged 20-24 years, married or in union before age 18) based on Save the Children estimates using Demographic Health Surveys and Multi-Indicator Cluster Surveys for 112 countries. We use information for further 28 countries from UNICEF. In total, the dataset captures 140 countries covering the vast majority of child marriages in the world (10.2 million child marriages per year in 2022). Future trends are calculated using the annual rate of reduction observed in the past. For countries where only one data point exists, we use annual rates of reduction observed in other countries in the same income group and world region. Furthermore, as child marriage rates are reported as average for young women age 20-24 years, we use projections for the year the current cohort turns 22.  We assume that children finish primary school at age 12, as this is the most common case across the world. Number of children age 12 between 2023 and 2029 are based on UN Population Prospects 2022. We do not account for the fact that some girls may drop out of school before (therefore not finish primary school) or finish at a later age.

[6] We use estimates on extreme climate events produced by BCLIMATE group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel analysed for Save the Children. They used the largest multi-model climate impact projections database available to date as part of the Inter Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project phase 2b (ISIMIP2b) to estimate the risk of different climate events across the global. The analysis analysed for each grid (using a 0.5 x 0.5-degree resolution, which represents ca. 50x50km on the equator) whether across different models extreme climate events were expected to occur (wildfires, crop failures, droughts, river floods, heatwaves, and tropical cyclones). The data represents the climate risk for 2020 (combining 20 years of projections before and after this year to derive a more robust estimate). The model has been used by Save the Children in previous reports and the estimates were published in the academic journal Science in 2021 (Thiery et al. 2021).  We do not project those estimates further, as the 2020 calculations already include some model results up to 2030. This leads to a slight underestimate of extreme climate events, as those are increasing with time.  We calculate the number of children living at any time between 2023 and 2029, using the total number of children (0-17 years of age) in 2023 plus any births happening between 2024 and 2029. Total number of children and births are based on UN Population Prospects 2022.  

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Please also check our Twitter account @Save_GlobalNews for news alerts, quotes, statements and location Vlogs. 

Source: Save The Children

Dilek*15,  and Cem*3, playing a board game

ISTANBUL, 11 Sept 2023 – Nearly three in every 10 earthquake-affected households assessed across Türkiye reported having no access to education^[1] seven months after February’s disaster as classrooms opened for the new school year, said Save the Children.

As the first academic school year kicks off following the devastating earthquake on 6 February, UN data shows that access to education remains a major obstacle with children in 27% of affected households missing out on education.

For Turkish citizens, 21% said that none of their children are attending school and 20% cited financial constraints as the biggest reason.

Even for families whose children are in school, one-third said that tight finances were their biggest challenge after the earthquake. The earthquake disrupted the education of nearly 4 million children in Türkiye – about 1 in 6 – including 350,000 refugee and migrant children^[2].

In Türkiye, 1,842 educational facilities were totally destroyed and 637 were damaged^[3]. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed over 56,000 people in Turkiye and Syria and is likely to be one of the deadliest of the decade. About 138,000 people were also injured – many of whom were children.

Summer school programmes were launched in some areas to help children catch up on crucial learning they missed during the initial months after the earthquakes, but gaps remain.

Dilek*, 15, from Antakya, Hatay Province said:

“Because of the earthquake, we had to take a break from school. If I had a magic wand, I would like to renew this life completely … where there are no bad events… where I go to school.”

Save the Children is supporting children and their families in some of the worst affected provinces in Türkiye to support the national response with existing and new partners. So far, we’ve reached nearly 330,000 people, including about 170,000 children.

In preparation for the new school year in the earthquake-affected areas, Save the Children has been distributing learning materials for students and teachers, rehabilitating schools, and providing mental health support for children.

*Indicates name has been changed

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For further enquiries please contact:

Soraya Ali (based in London): Soraya.ali@savethechildren.org

We have spokespeople available.

Our media out of hours (BST) contact is media@savethechildren.org.uk / +44(0)7831 650409

Source: Save The Children

The news of the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Morocco late last night is a tragedy. With more than 800 people reportedly killed already, and hundreds more injured, we fear the death toll will rise with many trapped in rubble and in hard-to-reach areas of south Marrakech.

Mariam Mzoughi , Save the Children North Africa representative, said: “It’s heartbreaking to hear of the events of last night and we know that this disaster will pose significant threats to the safety of children and their families across the country. We are currently monitoring the situation closely and reaching out to agencies on the ground to see what support may be possible. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected”.

ENDS

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