A wake-up call for the future as Africa's Nurturing Care deficit increases
The UN Summit of the Future to be held in September 2024 in New York aims to secure concrete promises and action plans by Heads of State to fulfil existing commitments to achieve sustainable development.
With the UN Summit of the Future fast approaching, child rights organisations across South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa are uniting to sound the alarm: our children are being left behind, and with them, the future of the continent.
In a bold submission to the organisers of the Summit, a network of over 120 NGOs, including the Families for Children Consortium, the South Africa Parent Programme Implementers Network (SAPPIN), the South African National Child Rights Coalition (SANCRC), Give a Child a Family Africa, Save the Children South Africa and Breadline Africa has laid bare the urgent need to place children's rights at the heart of global development agendas.
Their collective voice is clear: without comprehensive, universal parenting support to enable nurturing care, Africa’s development goals will remain out of reach. Countries across the region and in South Africa recognise this and have made clear policy commitments to universalise support to parents to enable their provision of nurturing care. These promises must be fulfilled by ensuring parents are supported from conception until the age of three through a health system that is geared towards improved development and not just survival, followed by structured quality early care and learning programmes from pre-school to matriculation.
Startling reality:
●??????? Globally, just 17% of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) are on track. In Africa, only 6% of the 32 measurable SDGs targets are on track to be achieved by 2030. The rest? They’re either stalled or regressing.
●??????? In 2023, 185 million plus children under 5 in SSA – set to grow to 200 million by 2030 - By 2050, Africa will be home to 1 billion children.
●??????? Of equal concern is that less than half of children under the age of 5 years do not develop their full potential, and the numbers are at risk of increasing as the child population grows.
The submission underscores a chilling reality: the failure to realise the potential of Africa’s children is a root cause of the continent’s slow progress toward the SDGs. And this failure stems from a widening deficit in nurturing care, exacerbated by growing social, economic, and political adversities.
领英推荐
The youth dividend at risk:
“Africa’s greatest asset is its youth,” the submission asserts, yet this asset remains underutilised. The so-called “youth dividend,” the potential economic growth to be realised from a growing youth population, will remain a pipe dream if countries do not fulfil their commitments to provide comprehensive support for parents and caregivers.
“We are at a crossroads,” says Patricia Martin-Wiesner, coordinator of the submission process and founder of Advocacy Aid. “If we continue to neglect the early years, particularly the first three years of life, we are not only failing our children but jeopardising the future of the entire continent.”
A call for urgent action:
The network’s submission calls on the UN Summit of the Future to prioritise and invest in integrated parenting support programmes to remedy the nurturing care deficit. It demands that the Pact for the Future, set to be endorsed by Member States in New York in September 2024, explicitly commits to universalising comprehensive parental support from conception until children exit childhood at the age of 18 yers.
“We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past,” the submission warns. “The Pact must not only emphasise certain services at certain stages of life but ensure that comprehensive, sustained support is provided across the entire course of a child’s development.”
The network’s message is clear: the time for action is now. If we fail to invest in our children today, we will pay the price tomorrow.
For more information, or to arrange an interview with Patricia Martin-Wiesner or any of the endorsing organisations, please contact:
About the network: The submission represents the shared position of several leading child-rights consortia, coalitions, and organisations across South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, including Breadline Africa, Save the Children South Africa, and Give a Child a Family Africa. Together, they advocate for the fulfilment of children’s rights to develop and exercise their full potential, as a cornerstone for inclusive, sustainable development, peace, and good governance in Africa.
?