Climate, technology, education, growth 24.

NEW YORK, Nov 20, 2024 (IPS) 

The protection of children’s rights in the future of childhood depends on current interventions(education) that can help overcome complicating factors. As a new UNICEF report specifies, tendencies already impacting children and their agencies all over the world will be influenced and ultimately represent further tendencies of overall world development.

The flagship report of UNICEF offers estimates on what childhood would be like in the year 2050 when measured against the present-day changes in global concerns. Released on World Children’s Day (November 20), The State of the World’s Children 2024: This paper on education outlines how children can experience opportunities as well as the risks they are likely to encounter in the future about three global megatrends; demographic change, climate, and environmental crises, as well as breakthrough technology and education through The Future of Childhood in a Changing World.

More crises related to climate, health, conflict, education, and technology are looming in the coming years, affecting millions of children, lamented UNICEF chief Catherine Russell. This report’s projections show that leaders’ choices in the present… or refusal to make any… determine the world children will grow up in. Bringing into reality a positive vision in 2050 is not merely a matter of good thinking but good practice. Time and again they pray decades, particularly matriculation, is on the line.”

In his foreword, Russell said these matters risk children’s safety and integrity and contradict the undertakings made in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was signed in 1990. At the same time, she said that governments have failed to fully endorse and implement the rights of children in most instances.

On demographics, the Imagine report points out that the global child population will not change between today and 2050 and will remain stagnant at 2.3 billion. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia may be home to the world’s largest number of children by the year 2050. However, it should be pointed out that most of these regions encompass some of the world’s least developed countries, as well as the countries most affected by natural disasters and extremes of climate.

It also means that the child population will be reduced in all the regions during the 2050s compared to that in the 2000s. In Africa, the percentage is projected to fall to sub-40 percent in the 2050s from sub-50 percent in the 2000s; while in East Asia and Western Europe, the paid population is expected to fall to below 17 percent from 29 percent and 20 percent respectively. By 2050 half of the world’s children will live in ten countries, possibly India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This projected stability in the child population is a sign that the population is aging since life expectancy has gone up and child mortality is declining. In some regions the main customers might be people of a certain age, for instance in developed countries there is a need to satisfy the needs of older people. As Welander and Walard write in the report, this should not be at the expense of meeting children’s needs and designing spaces for children. Children’s rights have to be on top of the political agenda once again. More opportunities for generations to talk and work together should be created.

Global climate and environmental emergencies therefore affect children in as much as their health, education, and safety is concerned. According to the report, children’s exposure to extreme heatwaves is set to rise by eightfold, and extreme river floods by threefold, nearly double what the children of 2000 are exposed to extreme wildfires in the 2050s.

It is unfortunate, that this is a regular occurrence with children; however, depending on age or pre-existing conditions, hedonic level, and availability of resources, the effects these hazards will have on specific children will be unique. Based on the foregoing discussion of the report, a child who enjoys access to climate-resilient shelter, health care, and clean water is likely to have a better chance of surviving climate shocks as compared to a child with no access to such resources. Consequently, the calls for focused environmental intervention to prevent climate risks affecting all children by putting them at risk of having to flee from homes or schools shut down or fall ill.

The third megatrend highlighted in the report is what the organization has termed frontier technologies. This includes the extent and effects of digitalization on education and social life, and artificial intelligence (AI). It recognizes that these technologies have their strengths and weaknesses. Since these are learning technologies their use and application particularly concerning children require proper governance. However, the report also says that these technologies work if applied to the most marginalized children.

But the digital divide is still present, as more than 95% of the population in developed countries has internet access while in developing countries it is near 26% in 2024. Highlights of the report reveal that a significant percentage of youth in LMICs have poor access to digital skills. For instance, out of 230 million people who are expected to be in the workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2030, 230 million of the jobs will be expected to call for digital professions.

The difference between those who receive digital skills training and those who do not will affect youth’s opportunities to perform effectively and ethically in digital environments and subsequent learning and work settings. These barriers are associated with socio-economic environments, gender, and access throughout developing and developed nations.

Many of the projections discussed so far are in what this report calls a ‘baseline scenario’ of business-like usual, where global development patterns continue unabated. The report also presents its projections through two other scenarios: one where development carries on apace may produce more economic benefits in the LDCs and result in fewer children growing up in poverty and the second scenario presents; the delayed development scenario indicates fragmentary findings and more children at risk from environmental factors and or living in poverty.

According to the climate crisis expectations, if the current trend of development is maintained, eight times as many children will be in harm’s way and exposed to extreme heat waves in 2050. But in the accelerated development case, it reduces to four times the number of children at risk, and in the delayed development case it may be fourteen times more children at the risk of extreme heat waves.

More universal access gains in education should rise to each world area, 96% of children complete primary education by the 2050s, and 80% in the 2000s. According to the report, if countries pursue higher rates of development all school-age children could attain both primary and secondary education by the 2050s. Equalizing gender inequalities in primary and secondary education should be continually implemented especially in scenarios where a quarter of girls of fifteen- nineteen years of age perpetually drop out of school, are unemployed, or not in any form of training while the situation is opposite amongst boys.

The report urges the parents and governments who are adults to make decisions for the children based on the established conditions in the CRC. Lastly, it brings an appeal for all stakeholders to act in three areas of focus. First, to finance education and other services for children with disabilities and ensure that basic social security for them and their carers is provided.

Second, to foster and strengthen climatically resilient systems and amenities especially in the formulation of climate plans with a consideration for children. Thirdly, regarding safe connectivity and use of frontier technologies for children, obligation to strengthen children’s digital literacy and skills, for which a human rights-based approach to regulation and use of new technologies must be pursued.

Before implementing a single step towards elaborating the response to the major existential concerns of the 21st century, UNICEF underlines that children’s input must be considered. Based on this concept, since the future generations will have to live with the consequences of the choices made by the decision makers their understanding of their needs should also be sought.

Russell claims, in the foreword of the report, that these projections are not predictions of the future. Instead, stakeholders need to aim for bettering the existing situation and chart a positive course for children and adolescents. ‘We Will Extinguish Child Illiteracy’ The world’s children can live healthy, protected, and educated if the governments and nations act determined, Armstrong said. The vigor with which our children attacked this thing demanded no less.”

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