Millennium Development Goals

Debate between Virendra Sharma and Anas Sarwar

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship on this important issue, Mr Bone. I thank the Minister in advance for responding to my concerns, and I thank hon. Members for attending the debate.

An estimated 24 million children worldwide grow up without parental care. In some regions, as many as 30% live apart from their parents, and research suggests that that figure is increasing. Every child deserves to grow up, to go to school and to live their childhood free from hunger and disease, exploitation, abuse and violence. Experience has shown that this happens best when children are loved and cared for in a family setting.

The millennium development goals have focused global efforts to improve the lives of the world’s poorest people, yet many of the crucial targets are in danger of not being reached by 2015. That would have a devastating impact on the well-being of children throughout the world. Failure to provide proper care and protection for children is hindering progress in achieving many MDGs. Future development goals, which are currently being developed, need to recognise and eradicate those mistakes.

There are huge gaps in child protection systems around the world. Such systems are crucial to ensuring the protection of children who are without parental care. Therefore, addressing child protection in the MDGs and the successor framework is key in supporting the rights of such children. I will outline how children’s rights to care and protection are the missing link in achieving the MDGs. Children without the care and protection of their family are particularly vulnerable and hard to reach.

I want to cover two issues related to the MDGs: the importance of including protection and care concerns in efforts to monitor the MDGs; and the need to address the absence of an explicit reference to child protection and care in the current MDGs, if the post-MDG framework is to be effective in improving children’s well-being in the future.

MDG 1 aims to end poverty and hunger. Children who are in the care of the state, either in residential care or in detention, may fail to receive adequate food, despite the obligation on Governments to provide it, while children who are not in conventional households, such as those living on the streets, in migrant families, or in child-only households, are often excluded from social protection schemes. Poorly designed social protection systems are, at best, failing to reach children who are without adequate care and protection, and, at worst, actively encouraging family separation or child labour. In South Africa and Ukraine, payments to foster or extended family carers mean that children will be in better resourced households if parents give them up to other forms of care.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. In an answer to a parliamentary question I tabled, I was surprised to discover that the Department for International Development does not have a dedicated child protection policy. Does my hon. Friend think that that is something DFID should have, signalling post-MDG intentions?