So welcome everybody, thank you for joining us in our SDG Life space today.
So I am Claudia Gonzalez from UNICEF and I'm pleased to have
Mr. Anthony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF.
We are at the World Economic Forum 2017. Please do send your comments
and feedback, hashtag SDG Life. Mr. Lake, we are at the World Economic Forum.
There's a lot of criticism about globalization, about the negative
consequences, about like whether we're taking the world in a good space
and whether we're going toward the right direction.
We're here to actually talk about like how those sustainable development goals
can be that missing puzzle of globalization. What is the link between
children and the sustainable development goals and what role can children play
in actually improving the state of affairs? Well first of all I'm so glad
that here at Davos they're concentrating on the sustainable development goals.
The world is in a lousy place right now, everywhere.
And one of the great dangers is that people can then lose hope.
And if you lose hope you lose the inspiration to try to make progress.
The SDGs are providing a hope that the world can be a better place by 2030.
This is tremendously important for children, both because children are going
to inherit the world of 2030. So nobody has a bigger stake in it than
children do and therefore I'm very glad that children run through all of the
sustainable development goals, but also because it's just common sense.
Who is it that is going to make this progress in all these areas sustainable?
It's today's children because they will be tomorrow's adults.
They will inherit this earth and they will decide whether then
there will be progress in the future after 2030. And one of the main topics that
I've heard and I think that we have heard in this space and send us again
your questions and comments is about the anger, the fear because of the
inequalities, because there's a number of people that have been left behind
and you started talking about equity before anyone else did.
And I do think that I think your editorial probably like five, six years ago
was visionary in that sense. Now we're seeing the consequences of that.
How do you think that you know like the World Economic Forum decision makers
can focus on inequalities? Are we doing enough? Can we do more?
Well of course we can do more and of course we're not doing enough,
but we are making some progress. This is tremendously important because so many
of the problems around the world, economic, social, political, even military,
are flowing from the huge and growing inequalities in the world.
You cannot fix them overnight. We have to do everything we can right away.
But again, it's the children and their future that will decide whether the
world is as unequal in 20 years, 15 years from now, as it is now.
We have to train for the future all the world's children
in their early development, in giving them the nutrition and stimulation they
need to develop their brains when they're very young,
the education, the health, the protection that they need throughout their lives,
but particularly the most disadvantaged children.
Because if they are not given all of the education that they need
so that when they grow up they are playing on a more level playing field
than they would be if they are once again disadvantaged,
then the world will never overcome these inequalities.
So we have to focus on education, health, protection
for the children who are in the greatest need,
not just for their sake, but for ours. And you also brought one,
I've seen in this World Economic Forum 2017 edition,
you brought Shakira as your Goodwill Ambassador to talk about early
childhood development and the area in which also you were pioneering.
What would you tell our audiences? What is early childhood development?
What are the three words that we should know about it?
And what can people and children do? Well, more and more we're learning from
the scientists that in the first thousand days, or really up to age five,
children's brains are being developed in ways we haven't understood before.
And every time there is violence against a child,
then the brain is being flooded with something called cortisol,
which inhibits the development of the brain.
Every time that a child is not stimulated,
then the thousand cells that can connect every second in a child's brain
are not being connected because they're not getting the content they want.
Their brains are kind of sponges that want to pull together information,
or even just playing with children will do it.
Every time a child does not get the nutrition a very young child that that child needs,
the brain is not being developed.
And now we're learning that pollution can affect children's brains
because the micro particles from the pollution go in and have an effect on the brain as well.
So those first thousand days are critical in helping children develop
what is the most important thing for a child,
for the rest of that child's life, and that is the brain.
And early childhood development is new, actually,
in being part of the Sustainable Development Goals, which is great news.
However, it is one of the most underfunded areas of all.
And you brought three words.
I think that you launched a campaign just a couple of days before called
Eat, Play, and Love, which is something that we hope that decision makers,
if there are three things that they could remember,
is that a child on the first one thousand days could remember.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Not just the decision makers, but parents and caregivers.
We've just had a breakfast.
We're going to have a lunch with the business community
on all that the business leaders can do on providing, for example,
in the workplace family friendly rules
so that parents can get home to offer their children proper care.
The role that businesses can play in fighting against bullying,
against bullying, especially on the internet, et cetera, et cetera.
It's tremendously important.
So to our Facebook audience, SDG Live, hashtag SDG Live,
please do support and spread the word of the campaign that UNICEF has launched,
Eat, Love, and Play, which are the three words that we want to remember.
Mr. Lake, the last word, just on the message.
In other words, Eat, Love, Play, Nutrition, Protection from Violence,
and Play, so that you're stimulating a young brain,
so that someday that brain can not only help that child as an adult
thrive throughout her life, but also then contribute to what we hope
will be better societies than we have today around the world.
Thank you so much, Mr. Lake.
Thank you for bringing children at the center of the agenda
of the World Economic Forum 2017.
Thank you, everybody.
Join us later, SDG Live.
Thank you, Claudia.
Thank you.
