These are complicated times that the world is going through and, these days, the scenario is particularly challenging for children, considers the executive director of Unicef Portugal. Speaking to TSF On the International Day of the United Nations Agency for Children, Beatriz Imperatori affirms that “the conditions to grow up, to be a child, are more difficult.”
The reduction in vaccination rates and the increase in child labor and marriage – girls continue to be the most vulnerable group among children – are problems that have become more acute in recent years, says Imperatori.
The executive director of Unicef Portugal also draws attention to the fact that “there are fewer children in school.” The implications are serious and transversal throughout the planet.
“School is not only education and acquisition of knowledge. The school is also protection. For many children, school is food, it is being able to have access to a safe place, to health. Without school, there is a fundamental and structuring part of the whole world of the child that disappears “, she underlines.
After two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2022 is marked by the war in Ukraine. Beatriz Imperatori highlights the global consequences of the conflict.
“These are extremely serious situations. The war has brought great famine to the entire Sahel area, in North Africa. It is not just a matter of not having energy, not having access to cereals, not being able to deliver these children, but it is, in fact, all the disturbance that this war has brought”, exemplifies the executive director of Unicef Portugal.
Despite the gloomy diagnosis, in Beatriz Imperatori’s reflection there is also room for an encouraging conviction: “It is possible to change this reality, we have everything”.
For that, he says, “the important thing is the will.” The will to contribute to changing the lives of these children, not only in money, but “the ability to share knowledge, to create networks and associations so that, in fact, in the place -and close to the children- we can change their lives and your families.” Ultimately, this is the mission that UNICEF has sought to carry out for 76 years.
Source: TSF
