Vowing to create a "world fit for children", India has reaffirmed its focus on the development of the girl child, ensuring her education and fighting to end discrimination.
Ambassador Bhagwant Singh Bishnoi told the Executive Board of Unicef Tuesday: "The recently launched 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' or save the girl child, educate the girl child programme in India, is a significant step for ensuring protection of girls, increasing their participation in secondary education and their overall development."
The effort, he said, was propelled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call to the nation that" each one of us has a collective responsibility toward ending discrimination against the girl child, otherwise we would not only be harming the current generation, but also inviting a terrible crises, for future generations."
An example of the drive to financially empower girls was the recently-launched the Sukanya Samriddhi Account, a small savings programme for the girl child, which gives a higher interest rate and tax rebates on accounts opened for them, he said. The deposits mature when a girl reaches 18 and withdrawals can be made earlier for education.
Bishnoi noted that 472 million children, or about one in five, live in India, and said the nation "continues to implement national flagship programmes for education, reproductive and child health, child development, nutrition, protection and water and sanitation to achieve the vision of a 'world fit for children'."
Among its achievements, he said, were enactment of legislation to end child marriage and child labour, the reduction in child and mortality rates and the eradication of polio.
A UN report card on India's progress in meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals set for this year said the nation's infant mortality rate was expected to fall to 49 per 1,000 births, although short of the target of 42 per 1,000.
The report released in New Delhi Wednesday also said that India would not be able to achieve the goal of universal primary education. However, it noted that India had exceeded the target of halving the poverty rate during the decade, with 21.9 percent of its 1.2 billion people living below the poverty against a target of 23.9 percent.
Speaking against this backdrop, Bishnoi said: "India remains committed to the development of every child, ensuring his or her rights and protection from exploitation."
Among measures to improve the condition of children world-wide, he called for a strategy to raise funding for Unicef's programmes for health and education and for more cooperation among the developing nations.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
