Justice For Children Directly Linked To Reducing Child Mortality

New Delhi: Justice for children is directly linked to lessening child mortality and in the true sense has the potential to anchor the broader pursuit of justice. It thus needs to be multidisciplinary, multisectoral and multifocal in approach, says a just-published scholarly treatise by Ali Mehdi, who leads the Health Policy Initiative of a leading think-tank and has also been assisting the government in formulating it position on health - and other areas - for G20 meetings on the sector.

“Justice for children seems to encapsulate a broader pursuit of justice given its interconnections with the status of women and households,” Mehdi, a Senior Fellow at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), writes in “Shot Of Justice - Priority Setting for Addressing Child Mortality” (OUP/pp 246/Rs 995).

However, “modern theories of justice ignored children because they have not regarded them as full citizens, capable of choice and responsibility...even children’s bare survival - let alone their health flourishing or future prospects in life - is so directly influenced by patterns of injustice”, contends Mehdi, who has more than 13 years of experience in health research on themes ranging from health equity and justice to chronic diseases, drug regulation and anticicrobial resistance.

“A complex pursuit of justice should be multidisciplinary, multisectoral and multifocal in its approach,” argues the author.

“The long-standing problem of child mortality - and profound inequities in the span and quality of survival - cannot be fundamentally addressed with short-sighted policies and short-sighted measures. We have to take every human life seriously. We cannot have one set of development standards of privileged, and another for those of underprivileged backgrounds,” Medhi maintains.

“The precariousness of survival is not as much about fate or destiny - or even lack of healthcare - as it is about deep-rooted inefficiences and inequalities that characterise our political, economic, social, cultural and other arrangements. There have been substantial, systematic and persistent inequities in the chances and conditions of survival between as well as within developing and developed countries and groups. (IANS)

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