国际儿童日：公平缘何重要

纽约，2015年11月20日——联合国儿童基金会今日发布报告，指出自《儿童权利公约》于1989年被通过以来，尽管全球儿童的状况有了显著改善，但是还是有很多贫困和弱势儿童仍旧生活在一个极不公平的世界里。

“In just over a generation, the world has cut child deathrates by half, put over 90 per cent of children in primary school, andincreased by 2.6 billion the number of people with access to safe water,” saidUNICEF Executive Director Anthony联合国儿童基金会执行主任安东尼–雷克表示：“仅仅用一代人的时间，全球儿童死亡率已降低了一半，超过90%的儿童上了小学，能够获得安全用水的人口也增加了26亿。t children make up almosthalf of the world’s poor, nearly 250 million children live in conflict-torncountries, and over 200,000 have risked their lives this year seeking refuge inEurope.”然而儿童几乎占世界贫困人口的近一半，近2.5亿名儿童生活在饱受战乱之苦的国家中，今年还有超过20万名儿童冒着生命危险前往欧洲寻求避难。”

The report, For everychild, a fair chanc该报告题为《让每个儿童享有公平的机会：esents a statistical picture of how the world’s mostmarginalized children have fared against basic human development indicators.公平的承诺》，以人类发展指标数据反映了世界上最被边缘化的儿童群体所遭遇的境况。It points out th报告指出：

·       Children from the poorest households are nearly twice aslikely as those from the richest households to die before age five, and fivetimes more likely to be out of schoo最贫困家庭中的儿童在五岁之前死亡的可能性是最富裕家庭中儿童的近两倍，失学的可能性是后者的五倍。

·  最贫困家庭中的女孩在18岁之前结婚的可能性是最富裕家庭中的女孩的四倍。

·       More than 2.4 billion people still do not have adequatetoilets – 40 per cent of them in South Asia; and more than 660 million stilllack access to safe drinking water – nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Afric超过24亿人仍然没有使用上厕所，其中40%生活在南亚；超过6.6亿人仍缺少安全饮用水，其中近半数生活在撒哈拉以南的非洲地区。

·        Roughly half of the 159 million children suffering fromstunting live in South Asia and one-third in Afric1.59亿名儿童发育迟缓，其中近半数生活在南亚，还有三分之一在非洲。

“Suchvast inequities fuel a vicious intergenerational cycle of poverty anddisadvantage,” Lake sai雷克表示：“这反映了不公平的现象大量存在，并加剧了贫困与弱势的恶性代际循环，ut it doesn’t have to be thisw但这种情况并非必然。We know how to slow, stop, andreverse it into a virtuous cycle of intergenerational progre我们知道该如何延缓和遏制这种恶性循环，而且可以将其转化成代际之间的良性循环。能否为此做出更大的努力is up to us to decide to do sothrough more commitment and resources.并投入更多的资源，决定权就在我们的手中。must make this moral, pragmatic, strategic…andfair…choice.”我们必须做出这一合乎道德、切实可行并具有战略性的公平抉择。”

makes the case for closing persistent gaps in equity,arguing that investing in children, particularly the most vulnerable, is rightin principle and right in practice – and that such investment brings multiplebenefits not only to children but also to their families, communities 《让每个儿童享有公平的机会》表明缩小长期存在的差距、促进社会公平的必要性，提出投资于儿童，尤其是最弱势的儿童，无论从理论原则还是实践的角度看都是正确的做法——这种投入不仅能够为儿童，还能为他们的家庭、社区和国家经济带来多重收益。