2021 was the worst postwar year for children
.
A sensational step backwards, the one reported by Unicef and "on all indicators" in the matter of violations of children, underlines the spokesman for Italy of the UN agency
Andrea Iacomini
, according to whom "we will need 10 years to recover".
This year's appeal even goes beyond the dramatic figures at a global level, in areas of crisis and conflict, and invites us to look also to the 'next door' where anguish and fear, collateral effects of the pandemic, may have crept up. create an irrefutable emergency for the mental health of the youngest. "I address those who govern and who will govern: let's take care of the psychophysical well-being of our children," Iacomini told ANSA.
The theme is transversal and also in this case supported by the data: "Mental health problems affect more than 13% of adolescents between 10 and 19 years old worldwide. By October 2020, the pandemic had interrupted or stopped critical services mental health in 93% of countries around the world "reads the recent UNICEF report whose indications are aimed precisely at" Preventing a lost decade "calling for urgent action to reverse the devastating impact of covid-19 on children and young people . And if the data is worsening on various fronts, if the impact is devastating from Afghanistan to Burma, from Yemen to Syria to Ethiopia, hidden under a blanket of silence (in 2020, 26,425 serious violations were verified by the UN against children),to glimpse the signs that these two years of pandemic are likely to leave on an entire generation "just talk to our neighbors" insists Iacomini. "We must take care of them, our children and adolescents or we lose them. Because as our grandparents have borne the signs of war, our children carry the burden of these two years. And they will tell all this to their children".