India has second-highest number of child marriages: Unicef

[prasad1]

Share:

Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn WhatsApp Email Share Link

India had the highest number of unregistered children under age five between 2000 and 2012 and the second-highest number of child marriages, according to a U.N. report which said the country still needs to improve immunisation coverage and stop gender-based sex selection.


The report “Improving Children’s Lives, Transforming the Future — 25 years of child rights in South Asia” by the United Nations’ children agency, Unicef, analyses the progress made over the last quarter century on key issues that directly affect the lives of children in the region.


At 71 million, India had the largest number of children under the age of five whose births were not registered between 2000-2012. The report said that birth registration levels in South Asia have increased since 2000, but progress has been slow. India, along with Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives, has been recording “significant improvements” in birth registration but about 100 million children in the region are still not registered at birth. India has the greatest disparity between the poorest and richest households, with children in the poorest households being three times less likely to be registered than those in the richest.


Religion also appears to play a role as Muslims have the lowest level of birth registration in India (39 per cent) followed by Hindus (40 per cent) while the Jains have the highest (87 per cent).

There was a question of "threshold" raised in another thread.
Auhji said:

Since superstition and fear ties up the individual from head to toe, I guess, the mudicchu is right on intentions...

Does it mean that we should accept status quo in all matters? Does it mean that we should not raise social awareness questions? We know some some "so called traditionalist" want to maintain status quo in the name of culture (or is it?).

It said more than 2 million South Asian children die before their fifth birthday of preventable causes, and nearly 38 per cent of children have chronic malnutrition.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...by-18-unicef/article6403721.ece?homepage=true

 

[tks]

Prasad ji

There is no reason to accept status quo when we preceive harm that requires raising awareness.

But mature approach to raising awareness is to do so without (condescending ) judgement and with respect that arises out of genuine understanding of all viewpoints.

(By saying this I do not mean anything about you personally or your position at all ).

Let me illustrate my point with an example.

When I was in middle school someone we know well had just come back for a short vacation from USA where he was studying. I asked him how he is enjoying visiting his parents and his home town after 4 years of being abroad (At that time I had no idea or knowledge about other countries other than what we learn in Social Studies classes)

This fellow replied saying 'How can you all live with cows roaming the streets? '. Then he went on to complain about how there are beggers any place he went. He talked about unsanitary toilet facility in public places and made many condescending statements about everyone. He said he cannot wait to get back to USA but the least he wanted to do is to raise awareness to the backward thinking we all had.

I told him " Hey - you also grew up with cows in the streets of Delhi. The cows do not know that you have gone and returned from a place called USA. We dont need you to raise our awareness. The sooner your go to USA the better off we are". Then my mother objected to my talking back at an older person!

My point is that indeed some of the social issues this person talked about are very real but there is a big difference as to how one approaches the 'problem' of raising awareness.