Natural disaster, war, health crisis. When the world suffers the most, humanitarian organizations More work to alleviate this pain and protect children in particular. But are children really protected? he asks Jose Maria Vera (Madrid, 1965), CEO UNICEF SpainWith a long history of international cooperation, who will deliver the conference tomorrow (Rector’s Hall, 19:30) Are the social challenges of the Sustainability agenda falling?, Within the In Código Aberto cycle of the President of Inditex – UDC of Sustainability.
What are the urgent social challenges facing the international community and therefore humanitarian organizations?
Fighting child poverty and inequality, where childhood is at the axis; response to the impact of climate change due to global warming, with extreme heat crises, droughts and floods leading to malnutrition and the death of children; educational difficulties as the pandemic has caused an educational decline in immunization and health; Protecting mental health… And this includes the extreme situation of vulnerable countries affected by armed conflicts, Ukraine becoming more visible, Syria and Turkey due to the recent earthquake, the forgotten conflicts in the Central African republics, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan.
Some of these scenarios have long been controversial. Has there been any progress and improvement for the child population?
Most childhood social indicators show advances in reducing infant mortality, eliminating polio, immunization rates, and access to primary education in recent years, until the financial crisis between 2008 and 2012. And these improvements can be reflected in the general population. International cooperation, economic and social development has been thanks to the strength of communities and families and children that protect their rights and grow energetically.
In recent years, we have gone through a process. Pandemic and Russia keeps war with Ukraine. How was childhood affected?
Since that financial crisis, we’ve seen a recession in many of these childhood indicators, improvements have been much slower, and the biggest decline has been in the past three years. Due to polycrisis: the combination of climate change, COVID and armed conflict leads to an energy and inflationary crisis, in the case of Ukraine, which puts children in a position of greater vulnerability and risk. This triple crisis means there are more children without access to basic vaccines, suffering from school delays and the fragility of the education system. There are 100 million children driven into poverty by the pandemic, eight million malnourished in the Horn of Africa, and 36.5 million children forced to leave their homes and playgrounds because of the weather and wars.
Are we too far away in Spain to notice all this?
We’re also seeing regressions in Spain. Child poverty rates have increased and there is still no data for the inflationary year. The latest living conditions survey, which refers to data for 2020 and 2021, speaks of a 1.7% increase in the child population at risk of poverty and exclusion; that’s more of an increase than the poverty risk of the total population.
The triple crisis that also punishes Spain?
While the impact of warming and pollution on children’s health is already being recognized, the impact of climate change is still low. The weight of COVID was strong and left its mark on mental health. And the war caused an inflation that the population noticed day by day. The aggravating factor is not something as tangible as new, but rather a structural situation. Spain still maintains its childhood poorly and poorly in the socioeconomic field. Compared with other similar European countries, the poverty reduction ability of social transfers is low. Difficulty in accessing decent housing and job insecurity, especially in single-parent families with a single mother, are not accompanied by sufficiently robust social protection.
Have large companies chosen sustainability in the face of crises and reinforced their social challenges?
In the last decade, corporate social responsibility has been transformed strategically and wholeheartedly by social projects and volunteering. But we have to be much more serious about these issues. Social challenges should be tackled with the same intensity and we don’t see that, it’s a brake we see. A greater contribution is needed: economic contributions, social programmes, more information, technology, innovative capacity to influence the way schools connect to the Internet, new vaccines, access to water, adaptation to climate change… this is the area where I want to send the message that more needs to be done.