Dressed in their countries' traditional costumes, Bolivian delegate 18-year-old Bernaldina Condori and 14-year-old Etelvina Diaz, from Panama, enjoy the performance of the Ashe Ensemble yesterday at an international children's conference in Kingston yesterday. - Rudolph Brown THE ONE-WEEK Fifth Ministerial Conference on Children and Social Policy in the Americas, enters its second day today with a special focus on the impact that HIV/AIDS is having on children.
The region, said Per Engebak, UNICEF's Region-al Director for the Americas and the Caribbean, has moved too late to take into account new areas of concern such as the AIDS epidemic and globalisation, child labour and exploitation and crime and violence.
"We focused on health, nutrition and education interventions and we have seen great progress in most fields but we only came to realise in the decade how many other areas of life must be addressed to really see child and family rights completely fulfilled," he told more than 600 delegates.
UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Internationally famous singer/actor Harry Belafonte is scheduled to attend a workshop this afternoon at the Jamaica Conference Centre, where Jamaica's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Peter Figueroa, will make a presentation on HIV/AIDS.
This session comes against the background of an estimated 11,000 street children in Jamaica, many of whom are exposed to the risk of contracting the disease.
A 1998 Caribbean Adolescent Health Survey showed that teenagers were "very vulnerable" to the disease. Some 40 per cent of adolescents, who reported being sexually active, had their first sexual experience before age 10 and an additional 20 per cent before 11 and 12 years. More than half did not use contraceptives the last time they had sex. Poverty, sexual abuse, the commercial sex trade, and tourism were cited in that survey as increasing the risk to children.
Presenters during yesterday's workshops highlighted the need for improvements in education and social services which have an impact on children. While it was noted that Latin American and Caribbean countries have made much progress in some of these areas, there was also acknowledgement that much more needed to be done to recognise the basic rights of poor and disabled children.
The United Nations Children's Fund's (UNICEF) Per Engebak told delegates from 34 countries that the Caribbean was still behind in areas like improving maternal mortality, the lives of many poor women and school drop-out rates, which reduced earning power and cost governments more in terms of adult education.
Latin American and Caribbean countries were also advised to seek an alternative to jailing children because this may contribute to higher levels of violence. This came from Senator Landon Pearson, Personal Representative to the Canadian Prime Minister, who, though admitting that young people should be held accountable for their actions, encouraged nations to think carefully about the way in which they dealt with them because the process was expensive and often bred violent adults from these children.
"We spend too much time taking the expensive approach of incarceration. The challenge is will crime prevention and control intensify exclusion of children," she said.
