Recovery with a human face
A co-ordinated UNICEF Strategy on Policy Advocacy and Partnerships for Children in Response to the Global Financial Crisis and Economic Slowdown.
Children and poor households are being hit hard by the cumulative effects of continued high food prices, economic slowdown and fiscal adjustments in medium and low income countries. as households cope by compromising essential expenditures, children's rights to education, health, and protection have come under increasing threat, particularly for poor and marginalized children.
Many governments face increased social demands but decreasing fiscal resources to address them. Further, as a large number of governments are becoming more indebted, there is need to guard against premature fiscal tightening and post-crisis adjustment in order to ensure that the goal of long-term fiscal sustainability does not come at the expense of irreversible human losses and efforts to further child rights and MDGs.
It is critical for organizations to combine their strengths and bridge the divide between relief and development. In the 1980s, UNICEF work on adjustment with a Human Face was a world-recognized milestone that helped ensure that children and their families were not treated as collateral damage, but as recipients of necessary and adequate development investments. The same arguments remain valid in current times: recovery with a human face is an urgent priority.
