The InterDependent

Adolescence is a crucial time for youngsters to explore opportunities for themselves in earnest and make lifestyle choices, but it is also a stage that has remained stubbornly on the sidelines of international agendas. As more programs focus on the first decade of children’s lives, it becomes equally important for societies to pay attention to the next 10 years.

Increasing resources to adolescents – 10 to 19 years old – has long-lasting effects, research has found. Doing so can help to break the link of poverty and other social inequities that carry into adulthood. Moreover, girls suffer more than boys in such areas as education, health and domestic abuse, continuing the downward spiral.

Research has proven that taking care of adolescents can also counter lifelong sex discrimination and problems centered around climate change, economic turmoil and HIV-AIDS. Protecting children is also embedded in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most-endorsed human-rights treaty in the world, with the biggest exception being the United States.

"Adolescence, an Age of Opportunity," is Unicef's recent State of the World’s Children report, summarizing just how vital it is for policy makers, educators and other officials to address the needs of the world’s 1.2 billion adolescents, about 18 percent of the global population. Poverty, unemployment and globalization are not only hurdles for adults but also for youths, the report emphasizes; and despite leaps in health and education worldwide, the benefits of globalization remain out of reach for millions of youngsters.

Asselin/Unicef

A new Unicef report on adolescents captures the major challenges they encounter as they break into adulthood. Here, a former child soldier recovers in a rehabilitation center in Chad, his face deliberately obscured to hide his indentification.

Eighty-eight percent of adolescents live in the developing world, with the largest numbers concentrated in East Asia, South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Only 12 percent of people in industrialized nations are adolescents.

The recent revolt in Egypt, for example, is a clear example of how serious socioeconomic woes –- high unemployment and few avenues for decent livelihoods -- catapulted young people to overthrow the government.

Almost half of the world’s adolescents do not go to secondary school; about one million are exploited for cheap labor or sex trade every year; around 70 million girls and women have gone through genital mutilation; and millions more become young mothers. Girls living in compromised situations – out of school, in early marriage, experiencing unsafe sex – also tend to pass these problems on to their children.

Other burning issues confronting adolescents include legal troubles, violence, abuse, malnourishment, mental health, unemployment and residing in conflict zones.

“We are in the middle of a significant youth bulge and half are adolescent girls,” Tamara Kreinin, the executive director of the women and population program at the United Nations Foundation, said last month at a press conference introducing the Unicef report. “At the same time, girls remain invisible, and it’s up to us and it will really will be a mark of our success how we address adolescent girls. We can break a cycle of poverty and see change.”

Adolescents are generally healthier today than in the past, but poor health still dogs many. For starters, this is the period when boys and girls become sexually active, so they need to have access to sexual and reproductive health services and information early on, the report says. Child marriage is a perennial occurrence in certain regions and associated with a high chance of complications in pregnancy and childbirth, among the leading causes of deaths for girls 15 to 19 years old. HIV-AIDS poses a great threat, too, with girls at much higher risk than boys for contracting the disease, primarily because they lack control over condom use.

Depression, eating disorders and self-destructive behaviors are also rising in many countries.

Gender differences in nutrition are especially striking in west and central Africa and South Asia. Undernutrition in the developing world can lead to serious health problems later on, just as obesity undermines people in both industrialized and developing countries.

A good education is out of reach for millions. Research shows that education can innoculate children and young adults against poverty and other social ills, but secondary education is not always at hand or is below standards. Not finishing primary school, higher costs in secondary school, farther distance to classes and having to work also conspire against children getting a proper education. In addition, girls attend school at rates lower than boys in most regions (the worst areas being eastern and southern Africa), and they outperform boys in almost all developed countries as well as in Latin American, the Caribbean and East Asia and the Pacific region.

To counter some of these problems, the report suggests extending compulsory schooling to the secondary level and abolishing both primary and secondary school fees.

Pirozzi/Unicef

In Malawi, children at an AIDS club event in Lilongwe, the capital. A Unicef report on adolescents says that one-third of all new HIV cases worldwide are claimed by youths 15 to 24 years old.

Many of the threats to children from violence, abuse and exploitation reach their height during adolescence, and millions of youngsters find themselves grappling with the law. Providing better “protection” for youths in these areas can help alleviate these vicious cycles, the Unicef report says. Boys are particularly at risk, forced to become child soldiers or to work in hazardous conditions as laborers; those who end up with legal troubles are also subjected to inadequate legal systems. Those with disabilities, living on the streets or in refugee situations face even more complications.

Yet again, girls experience higher rates of domestic and sexual violence than boys; these abuses, the report says, reinforce male dominance in the household and community, hurting girls’ self-esteem, among other aspects of their well-being.

Ultimately, adolescence is a “pivotal point,” Hilde Johnson, Unicef's deputy executive director, said at the press conference. It is a chance to consolidate the historical gains that have been made in early childhood or to risk seeing the gains wiped out. As witnessed in Egypt, youths, Johnson added, “can change the world and their world.”