Child malnutrition is the most pressing problem of the world, damaging to both children and nations. Malnutrition is costing poor countries up to 3 per cent of their yearly GDP. The pessimistic scenario suggests that child malnourishment will increase from 166 to 175 million children by 2020. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the plight of these children, and the root causes of malnutrition, are of paramount importance. The underlying causes of undernutrition vary from poverty, low levels of education and poor access to health services. The high levels of undernutrition in children and women in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa pose a major challenge for child survival and development. The examples of Thailand, Vietnam and China show that the problem of malnourishment is entirely preventable. Areas of intervention that will be most successful and the key policy priorities for each major developing region need to be identified.
The Uruguay Round established rules that were expected to improve market access for agricultural products and reduced export subsidies and domestic support payments as an opportunity to level the playing field. Major global economic benefits were predicted from the establishment of WTO and Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). But what has happened since the Uruguay Round? Industrialized countries systematically use sub-sidies to skew the benefits of agricultural trade in their favour. The overall level of support to agriculture in these countries has fallen very little. What does free trade mean in a context where the world's largest ex-porter of dairy produce, the EU, is providing subsidies in excess of US $300 billion a year? India is the num-ber one producer of milk and yet cannot compete. The European Union and the United States have invented a category of support—known as the Green Box and the Blue Box in WTO talks—deemed to be decoupled from production and therefore exempt from cuts in subsidies. The persistence of high trade barriers as well as regulatory controls related to food safety and environment make trade rules unfair. The overall feeling is that AoA is an ‘unequal treaty’ as high support continues in OECD countries. There is no level playing field. Agricultural surpluses in rich countries, generated through protection and subsidies and then dumped onto world markets, have hurt agricultural development in developing countries. Developing countries as a whole are projected to increase their net imports of cereals for all purposes to a total of more than 200 million tonnes of net annual imports from the developed countries by 2020. Developing countries like India will become net agricultural importers. It is argued that the Uruguay Round agreements did not go far enough in reducing trade barriers in developed countries, to have a significant impact. It did, however, establish a framework for negotiating further reductions in support. The Doha Round offers the opportunity to level a tilted playing field. Equally important is India improving its own agricultural policies. For years we have discriminated against agriculture.
Child malnutrition is the most neglected form of human deprivation and is one important cause of more than half of all child deaths worldwide. For nearly half of the 2.2 billion children in the world, childhood is starkly and brutally different from what we all aspire. With the childhood of so many under threat, our collective future is compromised damaging the children and the nations. The cost of hunger is extremely high, costing the poor countries up to 3 per cent of their yearly GDP. Improving nutrition could add 2 to 3 per cent a year to a poor nation's GDP. Only if we move closer to realizing the rights of all children will we move closer to our goals of development and peace. The optimistic scenario projects Latin America as completely eliminating child malnutrition, West Asia and North Africa experiencing a decline to 1 million malnourished children, and China reducing the number of malnourished children to 3 million in 2020. The progress in the optimistic scenario is significant, yet, 94 million children would be malnourished by 2020. The pessimistic scenario reveals devastating results. Under all the scenarios, South Asia will continue to be the region with the highest prevalence and number. South Asia is also the only region in which girls are more likely to be underweight than boys.There will be very little progress in reducing the prevalence of child malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa. Unless action is taken within the first two years of a child's life to improve nutrition, the children will suffer irreparable damage. Given the magnitude of the problem and its consequences for economic development, there is a need for immediate and large-scale action. Significant reduction in child malnutrition is possible but will require renewed efforts from various quarters. The world must alter its priorities so that the problem of child malnutrition is placed at the centre stage. A concerted effort to eliminate childhood malnutrition would require policy reform and more public investment producing dramatic long-term gains in income growth, agricultural productivity, and social indicators. Understanding the plight of excluded and invisible children and the factors behind their marginalization, efforts to focus initiatives on these children must form an integral part of national strategies on child rights and development such as: child-focused budgets capacity building encouraging children to participate. If national capacities are not built up and processes are not driven by national governments and local communities, even those interventions that are initially successful risk failure when international assistance diminishes or political priorities change.
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