JIN DING/CHINA DAILY
The world has demonstrated that it is possible to make progress for children on an extraordinary scale. Child mortality was reduced by around 50 percent in two decades, based largely on a simple recipe with three ingredients. First, a safe start. One in four children is now born in a UNICEF-supported health clinic. Second, immunization.
Over the past 50 years, vaccines have saved around 154 million lives — nearly half of all children under five have been reached by UNICEF. And third, safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene — which we have been able to deliver to 2 billion people in the past two decades.
These gains go beyond saving young lives. They ripple into families, communities and the whole of society. Many of the results achieved for children are the foundation of human progress.
These impressive results, achieved working hand-in-hand with national governments and local partners, should propel all of us to continue and to step it up to achieve the sustainable development goals. Sadly, we are seeing the opposite: international development and humanitarian response are currently under severe strain, with Official Development Aid declining by 23.1 percent in the past year alone — the largest contraction ever.
At the same time, challenges for children are rising rapidly. This year alone, UNICEF estimates that more than 200 million children will need humanitarian assistance in 133 countries and territories. Furthermore, around 1 billion children — nearly half of the world's child population — live in countries classified as at "extremely high risk" of climate change impacts, from drought to floods, from tropical cyclones to glacier lake outbursts. The debt crisis and recent macro-economic shocks are pushing families back into poverty.
Children are often the most affected by this — even if they are the least responsible — and they pay the highest price. After decades of sustained decline, child mortality is now rising.
It is not that we do not know what is needed to achieve the SDGs. We know what needs to be done. We have shown what can be done.
But all relevant stakeholders, from governments to UN organizations and local partners, need to be enabled to do it — and resourcing these efforts is a key part of that.
The annual financing gap to achieve the SDGs is now in the order of $3 to $4 trillion. This is not merely a shortfall in financial capital — it is an appalling deficit in maximizing human capital.
We see this in the life of a child without light to study; in a mother walking for hours to fetch water; in the levels of stunting in the first years of life, leading to lifelong cognitive disabilities that a child can never recuperate from; and in a school cut off from electricity and the digital world. But the impact goes beyond the individual child.
Because when children lose access to vaccines, diseases spread across borders. When they go without nutrition, education or protection, the desperation that follows fuels instability and displacement.
We have seen it over and over again: the more fragile children's lives become, the more fragile the world becomes. People may think that investing in children is "charity", or something "nice to have". But investing in children is one of the best investments we can make, supporting security and stability as well as peace and prosperity.
When resources are scarce, it is even more important to look at "what works" to ensure every dollar is yielding maximum results. At UNICEF, we know that investing in children yields a high economic return on investment.
For every dollar invested in children, countries see up to a tenfold return through stronger economies and more resilient societies.
If this would be your stock portfolio, you would run to invest your money here. Every dollar invested in education, brings $20 in future GDP growth, with important co-benefits. It helps to avoid, among other things, young girls getting married.
It also helps to avoid the recruitment of young boys by armed groups and terrorists. Every dollar invested in water and sanitation yields $5.5 of return in diseases prevented, saving public health budgets.
Investing in children isn't just the morally right thing to do, it is also politically smart and economically rational. It is one of the most powerful investments we can make in shaping the future we all want.
Yet today we are facing a brutal financial paradox: even as the needs of children grow, our ability to invest in their future — and hence, our own collective future — is severely constrained.
We have more conflicts now than we have ever experienced since UNICEF was established, yet humanitarian funding went down by around 33 percent last year.
We have more children than ever at risk from the impacts of climate change. Yet a mere 2.4 percent of climate finance from multilateral climate funds is child-responsive, leaving children exposed.
Compounding this is the debt crisis, with many developing countries spending more on debt servicing than on social sectors such as education, health and nutrition that children's lives and well-being depend on.
This has real consequences. When a debt crisis lasts up to three years, infant mortality increases by 2.2 percent. When that crisis exceeds three years, infant mortality increases by 11.4 percent.
The debt trap becomes a death trap for children, and the financial impact of the current crisis will exacerbate this.
We must change course. Safeguarding children's present and future is a worthy cause and a smart choice.
We need new global momentum to ensure resources flow to where the needs are the greatest and the return on investment the highest: children. We need governments in the Global North and the Global South to step up.
We need private sector entities around the world, as well as financial institutions and multilateral development banks, to engage. We need to innovate to ensure we go faster and further.
As an example, UNICEF is now exploring child-focused debt solutions with multilateral development banks and policy banks, creating fiscal space for enhanced social sector spending — including with institutions here in China.
Last year, we worked with the Export-Import Bank of China to launch a project in Nigeria on climate-resilient health, safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and signed a multi-year partnership to explore child-focused financing models in more countries and sectors. Recently, we also signed a new agreement to strengthen WASH and energy resilience for children in climate-stressed areas of Bangladesh.
But we must do more. We must unlock new capital and align investments with impact. Beyond grants, the scale of need requires pioneering more forward-looking and innovative financing mechanisms.
That's why UNICEF is also working with development impact funds, SDG-aligned bonds, outcome-based financing, parametric climate risk insurance and child-focused debt solutions that tie financing more closely to measurable results for children.
Every public and private sector actor has a role to play. Together, we can make a difference in the lives of children anywhere and everywhere. Their future is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.
The world is a tough place to be a child today. But it doesn't have to be that way.
What is possible for children tomorrow will be shaped by the decisions all of us take today.
The author is the deputy executive director, partnerships, UNICEF, and assistant secretary-general, UN.
The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
