World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake yesterday jointly urged global and national leaders to step up and accelerate action and investments in nutrition and early childhood development (ECD) programmes as a critical foundation for equitable development and economic growth.
The two organizations announced the establishment of a new alliance that aims to make ECD a global policy, programming and public spending priority, to give all young children access to quality services that improve their health, nutrition, learning ability and emotional well-being.
Advances in neuroscience and recent economic studies show that early childhood experiences have a profound impact on brain development and on subsequent learning, health, and adult earnings. Children who are poorly nourished and nurtured, or those who do not receive early stimulation, are likely to learn less in school and earn less as adults.
Globally, millions of children under the age of five are at risk of never reaching their full developmental potential. One out of four children under five (159 million) are stunted due to poor nutrition, with numbers significantly higher in parts of Africa and South Asia. Nearly half of all 3 to 6 year olds don’t have access to pre-primary education. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 80 percent are not enrolled in pre-primary programmes.
Nearly half of Uganda‟s population (48.7%) is under 15 years of age; the largest percentage of this age group is between 0 and 4 years. ECD interventions offer a particularly important tool for reducing income and social gaps between poor and non-poor populations that are becoming exceedingly difficult to bridge . Significant investment in ECD yields extraordinary returns that far exceeds the returns on most investments either private or public. This is because investment in ECD is investment in human capital, which breeds overall economic success for families, communities and the nation.
“The time has come to treat childhood stunting as a development and an economic emergency,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. “How will countries compete in what will certainly be a more digitalized global economy in the future if a third or more of their children are stunted? Our failure to make the right investments in early childhood development is condemning millions of children to lives of exclusion. We can’t promise to equalize development outcomes, but we can insist on equalizing opportunity.”
Emerging scientific evidence also shows that prolonged exposure to adversity – such as that experienced by children growing up in countries affected by conflict or households affected by domestic violence – can cause toxic stress, a condition that can also inhibit peak brain development in early childhood.
“What we are learning about all the elements that affect the development of children’s brains – whether their bodies are well nourished, whether their minds are stimulated, whether they are protected from violence – is already changing the way we think about early childhood development. Now it must change the way we act,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.
[related_posts] Through the new alliance, the World Bank Group and UNICEF are inviting governments, development partners, civil society, foundations and the private sector to make early childhood development a global and national development priority. The objective is to support country-led efforts to invest in nutrition, early stimulation and learning, and protection, and to engage with communities to drive demand for these high-quality ECD services for every child.
Recognizing the growing understanding of ECD’s importance, the Sustainable Development Goals include an ECD target – the first time ECD has been explicitly included in global development goals. SDG Target 4.2 aims to increase the percentage of children under 5 years of age who are developmentally on track in health, learning and psychosocial well-being. Although ECD falls under the SDG for education, it provides a natural link to other goals, too — including poverty reduction, health and nutrition, women and girls’ equality, and ending violence.