The plight of adolescents, worldwide
Focusing on fulfilling the human rights of children and adolescents worldwide would yield widespread economic benefits, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the head of the international child welfare agency UNICEF said Thursday. Harvard’s Lamont University Professor Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998, and UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said that a nation’s economic progress alone won’t necessarily help the more than 1 billion children and adolescents living in poverty around the world. Attention has to be paid to ensure they are having their basic needs met, receiving an adequate education, and getting proper health care if their lives are to improve and they are to contribute to their societies in the future. In the poorest settings, a human rights-based approach can be more effective than one based purely on economic considerations, Lake said. Such an approach would seek to ensure that children’s rights, as laid...