Children and Youth
Child and Adolescent Road Safety in South Asia
Low to lower-middle income nations bear 78 per cent of child road traffic injuries. Conversely high-income countries with robust safety measures account for just 3 per cent. This report outlines South Asia’s status country profiles assessment tools and guidance for effective action under the Safe Systems framework regarding child and adolescent road injuries. In 2019 injuries accounted for at least 9 per cent of the 12.2 million deaths in South Asia with approximately a quarter attributed to road traffic collisions. Among children and adolescents 171468 died from injuries with 29859 due to road traffic collisions the primary cause of injury-related death alongside drowning. The overall road traffic death rate was 6 per 100000 population though Afghanistan reported rates exceeding 16 per 100000. The region lost 2.5 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) due to such collisions among those under 20. With over 708 million children and adolescents in South Asia urgent governmental action is imperative given the substantial economic impact estimated to be billions of US dollars or 0.3 to 7.5 per cent of GDP. This report is intended to provide relevant information about the burden risk factors and interventions to address road traffic injuries among children and adolescents in the region. The target audience includes UNICEF staff in country and regional offices country level road safety and public health practitioners policy makers advocates and academics.
Learning for Careers
Knowing about the preferences needs and wishes of young people is an important precondition to successful career guidance policies and services. The European Training Foundation (ETF) and the UNICEF Europe and Central Asia Regional Office (ECARO) in collaboration with young people conducted polls and held focus groups to understand the needs of young people aged 14-34 regarding career guidance. The study covered Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Greece Kosovo Kyrgyzstan Montenegro North Macedonia Romania Serbia Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Young people want to learn for life and career education and guidance that integrates life skills and career learning enables them to do this. Fit-for-purpose career guidance should ideally be: a systematic combination of structured career education programs (as part of curricula throughout formal education to be able to reach whole generations) quality online self-learning and self-help opportunities; and person-centered career guidance service offered outside of school both face-to-face and online.
What puts children and adolescents more at risk?
Children and adolescents are more vulnerable to road traffic injuries than adults for a range of reasons. These reasons or risk factors can be classified as being non-modifiable or modifiable. In addition there are post-crash factors that place children at elevated risk of preventable serious injury or death in the event of being involved in road traffic crash.
Introduction
The 2018 WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety called for a ‘shift in the current child health agenda which has largely neglected road safety’ (1). The call for this shift is not new having been a central theme of the 2008 ‘World report on child injury prevention’ (2) but the burden of road trauma on the lives of children and their families continues to be huge. Road traffic injuries are a leading cause of death to children and young people worldwide (3).
What are good practices?
It is recommended that strategic planning for child and adolescent road safety follow three principles of best practice: Adopt a Safe Systems approach employ evidence-based child-specific strategies (alongside evidence-based all ages strategies) and include cost-effective interventions where possible. These principles are outlined below – and further details can be found in the documents listed in the section ‘Global attention and resources for regional action on child and adolescent road safety.
Executive summary
Knowing about the preferences needs and wishes of young people is an important precondition to successful career guidance policies and services. The European Training Foundation (ETF) and the UNICEF Europe and Central Asia Regional Office (ECARO) in collaboration with young people conducted polls and held focus groups to understand the needs of young people aged 14-34 regarding career guidance. The study covered Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Greece Kosovo Kyrgyzstan Montenegro North Macedonia Romania Serbia Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Expectations about future professions and education
While young people are paying more attention to their interests and passions when selecting a career the range of careers that they are considering appears to be limited. We asked young people what type of profession they expect to have at 35 and most respondents mentioned professional careers specifically traditional careers such as teachers doctors or nurses. This is paired with a somewhat unrealistic expectation of educational aspirations with many young people in our consultation aiming for Masters and PhDs.
Conclusions and way forward
Countries need to build well-coordinated and sustainably funded career guidance systems that are responsive to the needs of individuals especially young people to be relevant effective and efficient. The EU should support the countries covered in this report and the whole neighborhood in this endeavor through its instruments given that the scarcity of resources and capacity for building such a systemic approach are key bottlenecks. This would not only support achieving key priorities of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4 and 8 in particular) but would also be in line with the EU Council Resolution on better integrating lifelong guidance into lifelong learning strategies (2008) which gives a direct mandate to the ETF to “Foster the development of lifelong guidance in third countries”.
Why road traffic collisions need to be addressed
As the world struggles to address multiple global health issues it is possible to overlook the causes of death and disability that might be considered endemic. Road traffic injuries (RTIs) have been a leading cause of death of children over the age of one for many decades but we are now equipped with ample evidence to reduce this preventable cause of death and disability.
The state of play related to career guidance service offer
Effective and efficient career guidance systems should be systematic well-coordinated and cross-sectoral providing seamless lifelong support within a context of stable and appropriate funding enabling all those who require career development support the ability and the right to access it. Obstacles to achieving this system require understanding bottlenecks in both the demand and the supply of career guidance systems.
Acknowledgments
The regional report ‘LEARNING FOR CAREERS: What kinds of career guidance and career education services do young people want in Europe and Central Asia?’ is the result of joint collaboration between the UNICEF Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (UNICEF ECARO) and the European Training Foundation (ETF).
Child and adolescent road traffic situation in South Asia
The South Asian nations under the regional office of South Asia (Afghanistan Bangladesh Bhutan India Maldives Nepal Pakistan and Sri Lanka) have an estimated combined population of 1.856 billion or just under a quarter of the world’s 7.9 billion. This includes 708054 million children and young people under the age of 20.
Acknowledgements
This child and adolescent road safety report is a product of the UNICEF Regional Office of South Asia. The report was researched and prepared by Margie Peden Jane Elkington and Pratishtha Singh of The George Institute for Global Health.
Foreword
Today’s labor markets are turbulent and undergoing historic disruptions. In the face of accelerated automation green and digital transformations globalisation fluctuating demographics and recovering post-COVID-19 economies the character of work is changing. For many this change brings about increased risks of joblessness uncertainty and precarious employment young people being particularly affected by the current instability. Transitioning from school to work is therefore an ever more critical juncture that has consequences for the future employment well-being and social connectedness of the younger generation. However rapid changes in the demand side of the labor market make decision-making about education training and work all the more difficult.
Country profiles
Country specific information is included in the following profiles. The data included have been obtained from published information (see Appendix) and through a brief survey completed by UNICEF country surveys.