UN children’s agency UNICEF cautioned that while children have stayed indoors for the duration of the pandemic, silent threats may keep them from living out their full potential. Missing out on education, bouts of depression and anxiety, increased exposure to the internet, and being locked at home with abusers may cause irreversible harms that will take decades to recover. As UNICEF commemorates its 75th year, it paints a picture of how children and economies may fare in the future if not enough action is done now.
“We are living through a children’s crisis of immense proportions. Children will need all the support they can get from the government, their families, friends and all of us who are committed to ensure their survival, development, protection and participation,” the head of UNICEF in the Philippines, Oyunsaikhan Dendevnorov says.
Lost future earnings
According to global research, COVID-related pre-primary school closures in 2020 are estimated to cost $1.6 trillion USD in lost future earnings — the equivalent of 12 years of total international aid for development (UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, 2021).
An analysis by the London School of Economics indicates that lost contribution to economies due to mental disorders that lead to disability or death among young people is estimated at nearly $390 billion a year.
In the Philippines, according to NEDA, the estimated total cost of face-to-face school closure is PHP 11 trillion in lost wages over a 40 year period or the average working life of a person.
A modeling study by UNICEF in the Philippines predicts that under a worst income contraction scenario without any government assistance, there will be total up to 18 million children in the country living in poverty, double the already nine million children living in poverty pre-COVID.
Apart from missing out on opportunities to learn and grow, the pandemic has also pushed children at more risk of engaging in child labor, early marriage, and abuse.
The faces behind the numbers
Behind the future economic losses are individual children living in the present who need support. AJ (not his real name), 11 years old, acts as the sole breadwinner of his family by catching fish in the sea. “I help my mama because she doesn’t have work right now. And to buy milk,” he says.
Maureen, 11, is finding it hard to keep up with her studies. She was displaced by a typhoon in the middle of a pandemic. “It’s so hard to study if our teacher is not here to explain it. Sometimes I have no load for the Internet, so I can’t do research,” she says.
The impact of COVID-19 on children’s lives is immeasurable. UNICEF, in its 75 years in the Philippines, brings the voices of children front and center. UNICEF was founded as a response to the needs of children after the Second World War. Its mandate remains as relevant with the challenges of today. Check out unicef.ph to know more about UNICEF’s work in the Philippines.
