CHILD SURVIVAL, DEVELOPMENT and PROTECTION IN THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN:
Consolidating Achievements and
Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century
SECOND DRAFT1991-96 Situation Analysis of
Children and their Families in
ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, DOMINICA,
GRENADA, ST.KITTS-NEVIS, ST.LUCIA,
ST.VINCENT & THE GRENADINES,
and TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
CARIBBEAN AREA OFFICE
1997
© UNICEF Caribbean Area Office
Any part of this book may be copied, reproduced or adapted without prior permission for UNICEF Caribbean Area Office, provided that credit is given to UNICEF and that parts reproduced, copied or adapted are not distribute for profit, in which case permission must be obtained by The Representative, UNICEF Caribbean Area Office, Hastings, Christ Church, Barbados. UNICEF would appreciate information on how the material has been used or a copy of such material, if approapriate.
Editor and Concept: Fabio Sabatini
Contributors: Macharia Kamau
Christobel Ashton, Ezra Jn. Baptiste, Ernest Benjamin, Edris Bird, Tarlie Francis, Joseph Halliday, Vernon Harris, Didicus Jules, Vena Jules, Maima Mc Queen, Gaietry Pargass
Design and Graphics: Judith Hinds
Printed by
FOREWORD
Macharia Kamau
Area Representative
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This report is the result of the collective efforts of many people who contributed direcly or indirectly to it. The subregional Situation Analysis was prepared by the UNICEF Social Policy Advisor, Fabio Sabatini, on the basis of information gathered by no less than 15 national consultants who in turn interviewed a total of over 100 people working with Government Departments and Non-Governmental Organizations in seven countries. They made important contributions during the entire duration of the project and particularly through their active participation in the two round table discussions held in each countey at the beginning and end of the project. It is therefore their knowledge, wisdom and experience that UNICEF has attempted to summarise in the following pages.
UNICEF Representative, Macharia Kamau, has provided the much needed intellectual leadership and support during the various phases of the drafting of this study. UNICEF Programme Officers Juan Carlos Espinola, Elaine King and Heather Stewart all contributed with several rounds of detailed comments in their respective area of expertise. Judith Hinds has taken on the burdensome task of laying out the text and designing the final product.
While UNICEF sincerely thanks all above people for their invaluable contribution to this report, it should be stressed that UNICEF Caribbean Area Office remains exclusively responsible for the views expressed herein.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MAPS
EC REGION / ANBDOM / GRN
SKN / STL
SVG / TDT
EXECUTIVE SUMMMARY
..... historical development
As a result, Eastern Caribbean countries are being “graduated” as MDCs, on the basis of average national indicators which are somewhat misleading. The governments of the Subregion are cognisant of the social and economic challenges facing them and are in the mist of a restructuring effort, to bring about the needed diversification of the economy, while reforming the public sector in order to bring about the necessary enabling social and productive environment. Unfortunatly, the territories risk being left on their own at such a critical crossroads, when they are making an effort to transform themselves into competitive market economies, and while their social development gains have not been consolidated for long enough to be sustainable in the face of an economic or financial crisis.
The economies of the Eastern Caribbean have in fact showed deterioration in their growth pace since the beginning of the 1990s, and ample evidence exists of a correlation between economic downturn, lowering standards of child care and increasing child maltreatment in countries where the crisis is being felt more strongly. International as well as rural to urban migration continue to be a major cause of child neglect. These factors, together with poverty and unemployment, are contributing to the breakdown of the extended family system and has fueled to the increase of dysfunctional families straining the integrity of the social fabric.
Sectoral reviews of the situation of children and their families carried out in seven countries, indicate that the percentages budgeted for the social sectors are high, but the analysis of expenditure on basic needs reveals that resource allocations are biased against services used by the rural and poorer population, while there is a very limited public support to preschool education and to day care.
In education, trends in the Common Entrance Exam, show that in many countries over half of the children sitting this exam fail to gain access to good secondary education due to the limited spaces available at secondary school. These children disappear from school registers after the first year post Common Entrance, and the question to be raises is: what happens to them? The low educational performance, particularly in reading skills, is eventually reflected in the lowering of the functional literacy and socialisation skills of the younger members of the Eastern Caribbean populace. Juvenile crime and drug abuse profiles indicate that children who have been failed by the education system appear to have limited life skills, conflict resolution skills, coping skills and they do not have the entrepreneurial skills to provide for their needs. Teenage pregnancy rates, though declining, are still unacceptably high.
Health indicators show that improving trends and child survival now greatly depends on reducing perinatal and neonatal mortality which are critically linked to the lack of an early and regular use of the antenatal services. Adolescent health has become a critical issue and there is a definite problem with STDs, including HIV/AIDS, in secondary schools and among youth.
The conclusion of this study is that the basic paradigm of economic and social development needs to be adjusted to take the above issues to the centre of growth strategies. To help this process, there is a need for collection and analysis of social data, and it is necessary to reshape existing indicators and add more relevant ones, to allow for the monitoring and evaluation of progress in various sectors, and to link the macro and the micro aspects of development.
This subregional study, based on seven Country Situation Analyses on the status of Children and their Families, looked at Child Survival, Development and Participation as a contribution to the identification of the interrelations between social and economic development in the Eastern Caribbean.
INTRODUCTION: SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY
1. Rationale For A Situation Analysis Of Childrten And Their Families
The present cycle of co-operation between the Governments of the Eastern Caribbean Subregion will come to an end in 1997. A Situation Analysis is a major milestone for Governments, for it represents the beginning of the programme planning that allows them to undertake strategic decisions that, based on reliable information and analysis, will inform the 1998-2002 Programme of Co-operation. From UNICEF's perspective, the Situation Analysis is the initial step of an integrated programming process, which evolves from the national development priorities and identifies the immediate, underlying and structural problems affecting children and those most directly responsible for them.
This Subregional overview was prepared based on country-based Situation Analyses of Children and their Families that UNICEF has been simultaneously supporting in seven Eastern Caribbean States: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St.Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while the Situation Analysis of Trinidad and Tobago is currently being finalised.
Since the last Situation Analysis the vision Caribbean Governments as well as UNICEF’s has somewhat adjusted to take in issues more holistically related to social development. There is now a firm belief that, in order to design more rational and effective policies for children, it is essential to identify each factor affecting survival and development within the context of the wider national, societal and economic trends processes. For this, it is necessary to analyse the processes through which childhood and adolescence survival and development become problems that are passed on from one generation to the next, so as to develop appropriate social interventions designed to break the inter-generational transmission of need.
The process of developing the Situation Analysis as important as the actual findings, in that such process should help to increases awareness of the problems affecting vulnerable children and families. The most important element of this process was to transform the seven Situation Analysis into a national undertakings . This draft Situation Analysis was prepared through a consultative process, which from the very beginning entailed extensive discussions on the methodology and guidelines for the study with two national consultants and the major stake holders in Government and NGOs in each of the six countries. The consultants held several meetings with these partners throughout the duration of the study. The finalisation of the National Situation Analyses required country-by-country round table discussions on the major issues at stake for children and their families and on the actions required for fostering of social development for children and their families. The Situation Analyses were then reviewed in light of the feedback from the Government and NGOs. The amount of work involved in this exercise is testified by the volume of information that was produced by the 14 consultants:
This process made the Situation Analysis into a nationally owned document, a broad piece of research covering issues well beyond UNICEF capacity for active intervention, targeting a wide audience in the country and in the region.
At the very heart of this process, therefore, the Government and UNICEF see participation as not only a requirement for the legitimacy of social policy for children, but also as a prerequisite for its efficiency and efficacy. The planning, implementation and monitoring of actions for children and their families are all shaped by, and need to involve, the whole State, including NGOs, the private sector and the media. For this reason, in carrying out the analysis of causes of the main problems identified, which will touch on biological, behavioural and socio-economic factors, particular emphasis will be given to the elements that reside within the household, the community and the various social institutions.
Far from being an academic exercise, this Situation Analysis is expressed in practical terms focusing only on major challenges and to formulate feasible and sustainable strategies to address their immediate, underlying and structural causes. this is so because the outcome of this exercise will serve as the basis for strategies to be pursued for sustainable social and economic development initiatives of direct benefit to children, and which will determine the type of programmes for children that UNICEF will support from 1998 into the next century. The submission of a Country Programme Recommendation, containing the strategies, programmes and projects with their relative budgets, to the UNICEF Executive Board will be the final product of this process of analysis and stately discussions.
The Situation Analysis is a valuable source of information, for example for the Governments' reports to the International Committee monitoring the Convention on the Rights of the Child. National, Regional and International institutions, UN, donors and lending agencies may all use the Situation Analysis of Children and Their Family for a variety of purposes, for supporting social planning in the country, for advocacy, social mobilisation and fund-raising, or as a source of information for other research, analyses and discussions.
2. Scope: International and Regional Plans Children and Women
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has long been concerned that health conditions in the Caribbean maybe at risk because of the effects of global economic recession and the consequent budget cuts in the health sector. As early as 1986 the CARICOM Ministers responsible for health adopted the Caribbean Cooperation in Health (CCH) Initiative to meet the felt need of the countries to mobilize additional resources for health, to concentrate upon priorities and to promote greater technical cooperation among the Caribbean countries. The basic CCH Initiative document was approved by the Governing Bodies of both the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). A number of CCH goals and targets were developed as the first step in a continuing process for developing the priority health programmes in the Caribbean at the sub-regional and national levels. For example in the area of Maternal and Child Health the goal is to ensure the provision of a wide range of preventative, curative, rehabilitative and supportive services to meet the basic health needs of mothers, children and adolescents, giving special attention to high risk individuals and groups.
The CARICOM Multi-agency Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) initiative begun in 1994 is presently coordinated by UNICEF, and requires that PAHO, UNFPA, UNDCP, UNESCO, UNIFEM, WHO, and UWI agree to work together to strengthen HFLE in a complementary fashion. The joint initiative has evolved from the realisation that greater impact can be made by combining resources than can be achieved in a series of independent vertical initiatives presently undertaken by agencies on a number of specific health issues. At the request of CARICOM, UNICEF began looking more closely at life-skills education in schools, where there was duplication of effort and room for coordination.
A HFLE Strategy was drawn up and principles of agreement were signed by all concerned parties. There is now widespread recognition among participating agencies of the similarities in the various skills teenagers require to protect themselves from the temptation of early drug experimentation teenage pregnancy and the related dangers of HIV/AIDS. The HFLE Strategy was endorsed by the CARICOM Secretariat and the Standing Committee of Ministers Responsible for Education in April 1996. (PARA FROM MPO TO COME)
National education efforts influenced in the six countries under study by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Education Reform Strategy (OERS). This reform strategy is meant to be a mechanism which will help the nations to pursue with regional collaboration those aspects of education which they deem to be national priority. For example, the establishment of performance norms; curriculum development; measurement testing; teacher training, etc. A body of recommendations ensuing from a comprehensive review and analysis of education systems of the OECS which was mandated in 1990 by a meeting of Ministers of Education of the subregion, which provides the framework for Sub-regional initiatives to improve the quality and appropriateness of education for national and regional development.