Global Views on Challenges Facing Children

Members of the World Forum community were invited to respond to the question: "What is the most urgent challenge facing young children in your country?" Here are some of their responses:

Africa:

• Cameroon: Insecurity. Young children face lots of insecurity, both from health hazards and poor parenting skills. Children suffer from neglect, deprivation, and related violence from the very people who are supposed to protect them.
• Kenya: Both indoor and outdoor spaces are small resulting in overcrowding. Inadequate school feeding programs. 
• Nigeria: Poverty, with its concomitant effects such as malnutrition, diseases, and squalor, is the most urgent challenge facing young children in Nigeria. 
• Sierra Leone: The absence of learning resource materials. 
• Tanzania: Lack of adequate basic needs causes many children to be malnourished; hence they become vulnerable to so many diseases.

Europe:

• Belgium: The greatest challenge for today and the future is to adapt the ECE system to the growing number of children whose first language is not Dutch or French.
• Moldova: Many children do not have the needed support for their developmental and learning due to poverty, neglect, and non-existing or low-quality education services. 

Arab Region:

• Egypt: The main challenge would be how to introduce Egyptian children to democratic values, and ensure the right for expression, which should be a reflection of the latest democratic changes in Egypt.
• Iran: Economic and political hardship which has caused depression in families, forcing academics into early years, trying to impose their view of religion on children in every way, and lacking knowledge about developmentally appropriate practice.
• Lebanon: The most serious challenge facing young children in Lebanon today is the wide disparity between urban and rural children. 

Asia/Pacific:

• Australia: Indigenous children continue to report a depleted sense of belonging; many also display unacceptably low levels of literacy and numeracy.

The Americas

• Brazil: Children face inequity and social disparity at such a high level that it jeopardizes the development of all children: rich, middle class, and most of all the children of poverty.
• United States: The greatest challenge I see facing young children is the growing number of children in poverty who are not getting the proper nurturance and intellectual stimulation they deserve. 

See the expanded version of this article online here.

Source: www.ccie.com