As reported in the Trends Journal since April, the executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, David Beasley, warned the U.N. Security Council that as a result of global lockdowns in reaction to the coronavirus, an additional 135 million people could suffer “crisis levels of hunger or worse.” As recently as 14 November, Mr. Beasley now confirms that next year could even be worse.
On 15 September, Henrietta Fore, the executive director of another important U.N. agency, UNICEF, made clear at a press conference the widespread damage to children as a result of school closings:
“At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools closed their doors in 192 countries, sending 1.6 billion students home. Today, almost nine months since the coronavirus outbreak started, 872 million students – or half the world’s student population – in 51 countries are still unable to head back to their classrooms.
Millions of these children were fortunate enough to learn remotely – online, through radio or TV broadcasts, or otherwise. However, UNICEF data shows that, for at least 463 million children whose schools closed due to COVID-19, there was no such thing as remote learning.”
Most recently, on 19 November, UNICEF issued a report warning of dire consequences to young children if schools are reopened. The report, titled “Averting a Lost COVID Generation,” strongly advocates that children be allowed to go back to school:
“While children can transmit the virus to each other and to older age groups, there is strong evidence that, with basic safety measures in place, the net benefits of keeping schools open outweigh the costs of closing them… Schools are not a main driver of community transmission, and children are more likely to get the virus outside of school settings.”
Citing hard data, the UNICEF report makes it clear that keeping schools closed is having a devastating effect on nutrition and overall health of hundreds of millions of children worldwide:
- “There is a 40 percent decline in the coverage of nutrition services for women and children across 135 countries. As of October, 265 million children were still missing out on school meals globally. More than 250 million children under 5 could miss the life-protecting benefits of vitamin A supplementation programs;
- As of November, 572 million students are affected across 30 country-wide school closures – 33 percent of the enrolled students worldwide;
- An estimated 2 million additional child deaths and 200,000 additional stillbirths could occur over a 12-month period with severe interruptions to services and rising malnutrition;
- An estimated 6-7 million children under the age of 5 will suffer from wasting or acute malnutrition, a 14 percent rise that will translate into more than 10,000 additional child deaths per month – mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South America;
- Globally, the number of children living in multidimensional poverty – without access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation or water – is estimated to have soared by 15 percent, or an additional 150 million children in 2020.”
In conclusion, the UNICEF report calls for avoiding what it describes as a “lost generation” of children as a consequence of continued economic lockdowns and forced absence of school imposed on millions of children worldwide: “A severe global economic recession is impoverishing children and compounding deep pre-existing inequalities and exclusion.”