ISLAMABAD: Two United Nations agencies working on child rights and labour have warned that the number of children without access to social protection is increasing year-on-year, leaving them at risk of poverty, hunger and discrimination.

In a new report released on Wednesday, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Unicef emphasised urgent need to build universal social protection for children, and warned that an additional 50 million children aged up to 15 missed out on a critical social protection provision, specifically child benefits, between 2016 and 2020, driving up the total to 1.46 billion children under 15 globally.

“Ultimately, strengthened efforts to ensure adequate investment in universal social protection for children, ideally through universal child benefits to support families at all times, is the ethical and rational choice, and the one that paves the way to sustainable development and social justice,” said Shahra Razavi, Director of the Social Protection Department at ILO.

According to the report, child and family benefit coverage rates fell or stagnated in every region in the world between 2016 and 2020, leaving no country on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of achieving substantial social protection coverage by 2030. In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, coverage fell significantly from approximately 51 per cent to 42pc.

Failure to provide children with adequate social protection leaves them vulnerable to poverty, disease, missed education, and poor nutrition, and increases their risk of child marriage and child labour.

The report says children living in multi-dimensional poverty increased by 15pc during the Covid-19 pandemic, reversing previous progress in reducing child poverty and highlighting the urgent need for social protection.

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2023