United Nations:
Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi has mentioned that USD 52 billion can provide social protection for each kid and each pregnant lady in low earnings nations, underlining that this is “not a big amount” in a world with more than 2,700 billionaires.
Speaking at a higher-level UN occasion on ‘Jobs and Social Protection for Poverty Eradication and a Sustainable Recovery” on Tuesday, Kailash Satyarthi, the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner, gave a clarion contact for bold and proactive leadership to finish kid labour and poverty.
He mentioned that USD 52 billion can provide social protection for each kid and each pregnant lady in low earnings nations.
“That is not a big amount. This is just two days of COVID-19 relief measures as well as 0.4% of the social protection fund which is spent in rich countries,” he mentioned at the virtual occasion.
“We are not so poor. I refuse to accept that the world is so poor when 2,755 billionaires exist in this world. We have made progress when we didn’t have enough resources, we helped children and declined child labour,” he mentioned, adding that the world of today is a great deal more resourceful in technologies and other locations.
“We did it in the past and we will do in the future. There is no dearth of bold ideas. But what we need is bold leadership in all spheres of life… compassion in leadership, courage in leadership and proactive leadership with a sense of urgency,” he mentioned.
Mr Satyarthi noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated all the injustices and inequalities prevailing in the society and the worst sufferers have been the most marginalised children, specifically in creating, low-earnings and middle-earnings nations.
He pointed out that a lot of more children have been pushed into chronic poverty circumstances due to the pandemic. These children are out of college, denied overall health care, have no correct sufficient access to secure drinking water or secure, clean air.
“They are the children who are sold and bought like animals and sometimes at lesser prices than animals,” he mentioned in his impassioned remarks.
“They are the children who are exploited as child labourers and are breaking their backs for our economies,” he mentioned.
Underlining that “these children are our children,” Mr Satyarthi cautioned that if nations are not in a position to guard their children, most of the Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved.
He voiced be concerned that even in the course of the pre-pandemic years of 2016-2020, about 10,000 children had been pushed into kid labour each day.
“There is no excuse for that. There is no justification for that because it was the pre-pandemic time. This is not just apathy and insensitivity of the international community and all of us, including me and you. This is a crime against future of humanity,” he mentioned.
He mentioned the 160 million kid labourers are “160 million empty seats in the classrooms” and these are children who are “occupying 160 million jobs of adults.”
Mr Satyarthi noted that even if the spending on education is sufficient, “nobody can bring these children to school” untill extra efforts are made in freeing them from the “clutches of their masters.”
He underlined that social protection programmes will be profitable specially for the children when “we take swift and direct measures so that these children could be benefitted directly. Only then they will be freed from these situations.”
According to the idea note of occasion, which was addressed by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and quite a few other world leaders and leading UN officials, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to serve as a harsh reminder of the perils stemming from worldwide inequities and a reminder of the urgency to redouble efforts towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda.
“The equivalent of an unprecedented 255 million jobs were lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This led to a sharp increase in poverty and inequalities. Declining labour income has been distributed unevenly between workers, with youth, women and low-skilled workers seeing the sharpest drops in disposable income,” the idea note mentioned.
The High-Level occasion incorporated a policy discussion to frame the ambitions required for a socio-financial recovery to advance decent job creation, social protection and poverty eradication.
The occasion focussed on pressing difficulties such as application of successful financial, social and environmental policies at nation level by means of dialogue with social partners and other stakeholders worldwide norms and requirements underpinning the socio-financial recovery and a just transition and present efforts to reach just transitions in the context of ambitious climate action and the COVID-19 recovery and options that help accelerating and scaling up these efforts, specifically in creating nations.
()