January 17, 2008: Children are twice as likely to be poor as adults. Interview with Carel de Rooy in Novaya Gazeta.
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© UNICEF @2007 |
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Carel de Rooy, UNICEF Representative in the Russian Federation and Belarus |
One out of every five Russian children is poor, while on the whole, one out of every ten people in Russia lives below poverty line.
UNICEF — United Nations Children’s Fund — operates in 156 countries. 2007 marked UNICEF’s 10th anniversary in the Russian Federation.
Children have proved to be one of the most disenfranchised sections of the world’s population. Adults have built the world to meet their own needs. We can speak as much and as often as we want about children being the most privileged group in our society, but our children have problems which sometimes should be looked at from outside and could be better understood only when being compared to other countries. True, we don’t like when someone points out our drawbacks, even with the best of intentions. But should we indeed be trying to find our own way of addressing well-known problems?
Carel de Rooy, UNICEF Representative in the Russian Federation and Belarus, responds to the questions of the Novaya Gazeta correspondent.
— According to UNICEF research, Mr. De Rooy, in what respect do you find the situation of children in Russia deplorable?
— About 10 per cent of Russia’s population live in poverty, while 20 per cent of Russia’s child population - one out of every five Russian children – are poor. A country can be either less rich or poorer, but such a correlation is simply not fair. All the more so since population in Russia has been declining at the rate of 700,000 per year, and urgent measures need to be taken by the government to rectify the situation. Neither UNICEF nor any other international organization is capable of addressing this problem. But the important thing is to identify the problem, bring it to the attention of the government and public at large so that it becomes the subject of discussions. Only in this case could we hope that the problem would be ultimately resolved. What does it mean for a child to grow up in poverty? It’s not only the difficulties that he or she is experiencing today; it means that he or she will be unable to realize his/her potential in the future.
— How does UNICEF identify its priority areas of activities in Russia?
— Our research enabled us to identify the following three key areas.
The first one is health care. Curative care is important, but you cannot improve child health without preventive health care. Based on the international experience, we would like to recommend a package of low-cost, high-impact preventive interventions. For example, promotion of breast feeding. About 1.4 million babies are born in Russia annually, but only about 34 per cent of them are exclusively breastfed during the first six months of their lives.
Another program in this area aims at promoting universal salt iodization. Iodine deficiency is a serious problem in Russia: 66 per cent of Russia’s population run the risk of lower intellectual and physical potential due to insufficient intake of iodine. It would be interesting to note that it was Russia that set an example for the rest of the world in regard to the benefits of using iodized salt. This successful practice has been spread worldwide, with 70 countries today iodizing all table salt, while Russia has abandoned this practice.
The second key area of UNICEF’s activities in Russia is related to the right of the child to be brought up in a family environment. Alongside with the existing practice of adoption and guardianship in Russia, foster care settings successfully tested worldwide have also appeared in this country. The increasing number of children deprived of parental care has been de-institutionalized and placed in family-based care settings. There also exist regional good practices in the cities of Tomsk, Volgograd, Kostroma and Buryatiya. However, the current challenge is that the number of children being placed in residential care has been growing. Urgent measures need to be taken to prevent child abandonment.
— There has always been a tendency in social welfare agencies to punish families that do not cope with their parental duties.
— One cannot achieve any positive results through force. To give children an opportunity to stay with their biological parents, biological families should be supported in all possible ways. Vulnerable families in need of early intervention support should be identified; funds should be assigned towards medical treatment of parents abusing drugs and alcohol; assistance should be provided in arranging such treatment and with job placement of parents upon their rehabilitation. All this involves additional expenses, but it is worth doing it because as a result, families are salvaged from break-up. This is not only in the child’s interests, it is also much cheaper for a state when a child is brought up in his/her biological family rather than is moved from one residential setting to another.
The third area of UNICEF activities in Russia involves efforts aimed at building a tolerant and inclusive society for all children. A number of projects are being implemented in this area, with a great deal of work being carried out in the Northern Caucasus. Last year, we organized five summer camps for children from all Northern Caucasus republics. We invited children from North Ossetia to come over to Ingushetia for rest and recreation. Impossible? I had a chance to attend a seminar for school teachers in Makhachkala. UNICEF tolerance building models are used in 56 schools in the republic. Education officials from Daghestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia and North Ossetia have summarized the accumulated best practices and submitted them for consideration to the federal ministry. But there is need for tolerance both in the streets of Nazran and in Moscow and St.Petersburg. This is not only the problem of a school teacher in the Northern Caucasus.
There is a serious problem in Russia with the society’s attitude towards people with disabilities. Disabled children have the right to attend mainstream schools. Such education is called inclusive education in other parts of the world. UNICEF has supported the piloting of an inclusive education model within five Moscow schools, and we have plans to extend the model to include the Northern Caucasus and Karelia.
— Russia has a well-developed system of correctional schools for children with various impairments. There are eight types of such schools, where well-trained professionals teach disabled children. The practice of teaching blind deaf-mute children in this country is well-known all over the world and is referred to as a miracle. Why is it still so important for children with special needs to attend regular classes at mainstream schools?
— If, for example, a child in a wheelchair attends a mainstream school where he or she is surrounded by regular children, there is hope that in the future he will not feel like a social outcast. Later in life, such children have a greater chance of being integrated in the community’s social life. When disabled children grow up, their former classmates may give them jobs, because they have got used to their presence, they have become their friends.
There are over 600,000 disabled children in Russia. In Russia’s current demographic context of diminishing population, everyone should be assisted in finding employment. Brains and hands of people that have been staying idle only because of their disabilities should be certainly put to good use. This is a protracted process. You will not have entrance ramps installed in every building within one day. Laws should be enforced to facilitate the life of disabled people, as well as the code of behavior of healthy people towards disabled people, which are adopted more quickly in childhood.
— Do these problems exist only in Russia?
— In many African countries, UNICEF’s principal areas of activities include vaccination of children against infectious diseases, water supply, facilitation of children’s access to schools. In warring countries where there are children soldiers, the protection of their rights is UNICEF’s key objective. Late last year, UNICEF completed its research project on child well-being in rich countries. Rich countries also have problems that need to be addressed.
Interviewed by
Ludmila Rybina
