The end of the Second World War gave rise to the creation of several international entities—the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank—designed to organize the world economy and promote the development of countries. 

It is these organizations that dictate the directions taken in the world in which we live.  In addition, other entities were created to support the forgotten sectors, such as culture, education, childhood. 

After so many years have passed, the result is a divided world, in which the economy grows but the wealth is not distributed.

An unjust world, where half of the 2.2 billion children live in poverty.  A unequal world, in which 5 thousand children die before their fifth birthday in Japan, which has population of 127 million inhabitants, while 82 thousand children die before they turn five in Zambia, which has a population of a little more than 10 million. 

This inequality extends across all aspects of childhood—alimentation, education, healthcare, opportunities— as if these children were living in different worlds.  A world in which, while you are reading this article, 120 children under the age of five will die from preventable causes.

That tragic reality confronted by children of the 21st century would be completely different if, just as it obeys the ideology of the economic organizations, the world would seriously adopt the guidance of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). 

Each year, its annual report denounces the injustices, the abandonment and the insensitivity that seriously compromise the lives of billions of the planet’s children, while divulging measures that have been successfully adopted to correct that situation. 

In December 2004, UNICEF released the “State of the World’s Children” report with the telling title “Childhood under Threat.”  It details the poverty and the privation brutally affecting children all over the world and the most outstanding actions employed to combat these conditions. 

Among the actions cited is the Bolsa-Escola (School Grant).  The report also carries a thorough description of a similar program adopted in Mexico, inspired by the Brazilian model, which was given the name Programa Oportunidades (Opportunities Program).

UNICEF shows that, if programs of this type were to be put into practice all over the world, it would be possible to create a revenue system that would help the most vulnerable families and, above all, to guarantee universal access to education for even the poorest children. 

And, it states, this is the road to changing the situation of children worldwide:  educating today’s children to change the lives of their sons and daughters, tomorrow’s children.

Born in Brazil, the Oportunidades program, which was previously called “Progresa” (Progress) occupies a well-deserved featured position in the UNICEF report. 

The Mexican government adopted several measures to guarantee the program’s efficacy:  It pays the families an adequate benefit; it employs an efficient system of controlling school attendance; and it promotes strengthening the mothers who benefit, orienting and encouraging them to participate actively in their children’s education. 

In addition, it invests in improving the quality of education.  Because of all this, in a few years Mexico will be in a position better than that of Brazil in terms of caring for its children, and it will be an example that UNICEF will be able to carry to the rest of the world. 

We Brazilians, above all those in leadership positions, should read the UNICEF works more carefully.  The December report shows that Brazil’s world position fell in terms of caring for its children. 

In one year we have fallen three positions in mortality of children under five years of age.  We are behind Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia and the Palestinian Territories—countries that are confronting or have confronted war and terror, countries with much less revenue than Brazil’s.

There is only one possible explanation for this classification:  Despite the difficulties of the last years, we are an example of economic success but social failure. 

We continue to defend the untrue illusion that economic growth distributes wealth and reaches the poor children.  And we continue to commemorate the improvements in our indicators, without comparing our results with those of other countries. 

The UNICEF report shows that the situation of Brazilian children has improved, but less than that of children in the rest of the world.  The same thing is happening with K-12 education in Brazil:  It is advancing but at a slower rate than in the other countries.  We are falling behind.

To take care of our children’s necessities, we need specific public policies geared toward childhood.  Like, for example, an efficient Bolsa-Escola program, which Brazil invented and UNICEF recommends, and a federalization program for K-12 education. 

Brazilian children will not be protected as long as they remain a municipal concern.  K-12 education needs to be federalized to ensure minimum standards for the education of our children, no matter the city in which they might be living. 

To guarantee that floors will be established for the salary and training of each teacher, minimum parameters for each school’s buildings and pedagogical equipment, and for the knowledge acquired by each child in each K-12 grade. 

To accomplish this, very little would be needed:  some laws and some more resources from the federal budget.  It is only our myopia that prevents us from doing it.

If, in the last 50 years, we had given more attention to the UNICEF recommendations—as much as we gave to the economic organizations—our present social reality would be completely different. 

As it is every year, this report is a cry of denouncement and, at the same time, of hope.  It points to a future of engagement with the problems but also reminds us that the foundation for change is laid in childhood. 

The economic organizations disseminate the idea that the root of inequality is in the difference in adult income. 

UNICEF shows us that the cradle of inequality is in the inequality of the cradle.  And that it is in childhood that equality is constructed.

Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage – www.cristovam.com.br – and write to him at cristovam@senador.gov.br.

Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome - LinJerome@cs.com.

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