Bangladesh’s 33 million children, a half of all the children in the country, live in poverty, according to a report of United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.
Released in Dhaka on Thursday, the report states that one in four children in the country is deprived of at least four basic needs.
According to UNICEF estimates 45 per cent of the country’s total population are children and one fourth of them, 7.5 million, live in hard core poverty.
The report dealt with socio economic inequalities and investment on vulnerable children and called for higher government allocation to reduce children’s poverty.
It states 64 per cent of children in Bangladesh are deprived of sanitation, 59 per cent of information, 41 per cent of shelter, 35 per cent of food, 16 per cent of health and eight per cent of education.
In 10 years, with an investment of US $ 4 million, it says it would be possible to provide access to basic education to almost all the most vulnerable children in Bangladesh.
The investment for such a programme would only require on an average 2.4 per cent of the national social safety net budget and 0.37 per cent of the national budget.
At the same time, it said, the investment could create 46,000 jobs through social interventions.
Launching the report, UNICEF country representative Carel de Rooy told a seminar that followed that the government allocated just 1.44 per cent of its budget for the children, who constitute almost 50 per cent of the country’s population.
The budgetary allocation for the children, he said, was set aside under the government’s social safety net.
The seminar dealt with mitigation of socio-economic inequalities to accelerate poverty reduction.
Speaking at the seminar, finance minister AMA Muhith identified income inequality, malnutrition, enrolment in schools and nurse attendance at birth as the four key concerns of Bangladesh for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
For achieving the MDGs, he called for paying special attention to income inequality, enrolment and drop-out issue, malnutrition and nurse attendance at birth.
State minister for women and children affairs Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury said the report would help future planning for reducing child poverty.
Economics teacher Abul Barkat, who chaired the session, described socio-economic inequality as the key barrier to development and cutting down poverty.
The UNICEF global report shows that widening disparities overshadowed whatever progress could be achieved through international efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals.
It also points to widening disparities between developing and industrial nations, between the richest and the poorest quintiles within nations, between rural and urban populations and between boys and girls.
It cites socio-economic disparities in Bangladesh affecting child poverty as a matter of ‘grave concern’ despite progress in many social and economic areas.
The most vulnerable children, urban working children, children living on the streets and orphans have provisionally been allocated 0.7 percent of the social safety net budget, the report says.
