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Caribbean Child Research Conference to Explore Status of Development Goals

Jamaica’s achievements for children are under severe threat of being reversed by the impact of violence and slow economic growth, according to organizers of the fifth Caribbean Child Research Conference to be held October 20-21st at the Jamaica Conference Centre.

The conference will unveil the latest research on issues affecting children, conducted both by academic researchers and children themselves. The theme of this year’s conference is “Five Years Before 2015: the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Child Rights in the Caribbean”. 
 
The MDGs are eight targets agreed on by world leaders in 2000 to tackle poverty and underdevelopment across the globe. Jamaica has made some progress to meet the goals, but persisting crime and violence and the fall-out of the global economic crisis are crippling many efforts.

Violence remains the biggest threat to the welfare of Jamaican children, damaging every aspect of their lives through direct and indirect effects.

Data from the accident and emergency units of public hospitals for January-July 2009 indicate that 314 children in the age group 0-9 years suffered from burns, 372 were accidentally poisoned, 468 suffered blunt injuries and 121 were sexually assaulted (representing 14.7% of all reported sexual assaults).
 
For the same period in 2009, boys and girls aged 10-19 years accounted for 26.2% of all intentional injuries, 30% of all stab wound cases, 35% of all attempted suicides, 17% of all psychiatric cases and notably 61% of all Jamaicans who reported being sexually assaulted (mainly girls).

In his keynote address, “Reaching the MDGs with Equity”, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Bernt Aasen, will highlight the global and regional challenges confronting other countries as the 2015 mark for achieving the goals fast approaches.

UNICEF will be making a concerted push over the next five years and beyond to help countries meet the goals through an equity-focused approach – focusing development programmes on the hardest-to-reach and most vulnerable populations.

Each year, the multi-disciplinary Caribbean Child Research Conference aims to share the most current research on children, strengthen the network of researchers on children’s issues, and encourage research both in priority areas as well as those that are often under-researched.

The conference is being staged by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), UWI Mona, in association with the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), Child Development Agency (CDA), Office of the Children’s Advocate (OCA), Early Childhood Commission (ECC), Caribbean Child Development Centre (CCDC), Jamaica Coalition on the Rights of the Child (JCRC), and the Office of the Children’s Registry (OCR) and UNICEF. The conference is supported by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ).


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