Give Our Children The Very Best - Hans Olsen

By Melati Mohd Ariff KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 19 (Bernama) -- Children's issues hold a very special place in the heart of Hans Olsen's, the just-retired United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) Representative, Malaysia. His deep interest in and commitment toward issues related to children, education and development began in the early ‘70s. Olsen was then just embarking on his career as a journalist with the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation and Educational Television. Besides working in news and producing documentaries, he also hosted TV programmes for children. As his career advanced to producer and director, he was credited with a list of documentaries, predominantly on social and economic-development issues. Among them were films on children, clean water in Namibia, development efforts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the impact of micro-credit programmes in Nepal. His consultancy work later with Unicef eventually landed him a job with the UN agency. That happened in 1996 where his first post was Chief of Communication for Europe, based in Geneva, Switzerland. SIMILAR ISSUES Olsen attributed his posting to Malaysia to his wealth of experience on raising awareness about children's rights and support for children's rights, even though his work was basically in industrialised countries. "In Malaysia, a middle-income country fast on its way to becoming an industrialised country, the issues are very much similar but at the same time they are not. "It is because you have one foot in the developing world and another foot in the industrialised world," Olsen explained in an interview with Bernama at Unicef's office in Damansara Heights, Kuala Lumpur, prior to his retirement on Nov 30. Olsen described his two-year stay in Malaysia as very fulfilling and enriching, his central focus being his push for full understanding of children's rights, besides raising funds. "Raising support from the general public in Malaysia for this work has been very much like the work I have been doing in Italy or New Zealand. "But we were also focusing very much on the disparities -- those who are falling between the gaps, those who do not get a share of Malaysia's economic advances," he remarked. CLOSING THE GAPS Speaking still on the disparities, Olsen told Bernama the situation was more apparent when he went to the countryside and to rural areas, including Sabah and Sarawak. "Even when I just go to Chow Kit (a sub-district in central Kuala Lumpur), suddenly you meet many of these people who do not get a share of that progress. "These are gaps that need to be bridged. And to be able to reach Vision 2020, you need a cohesive society where everybody gets a share. "Everybody will not get the same share but everybody should have a chance to get a share," Olsen stressed. He then quoted some significant indicators that he considered "absolutely extraordinary," as achieved by Malaysia over a number of years. The data included the under-five mortality rate, which he described as one of the most important indicators for Unicef when looking into the situation of children in the country. "The rate has fallen from 70 deaths for every 1,000 births in 1965 to 7.8 in 2008. It is a great improvement," he said. Another key indicator he cited is the maternal mortality rate, which has dropped from 140 per 100,000 in 1970 to 27.3 in 2008. "The poverty rate has also dropped from 17 per cent in 1990 to 4 per cent in 2009. "So when you look at these figures, in many ways it is a success story. But it needs to be a success story for everyone," he again stressed. DATA MAPPING Still speaking on data, Olsen also observed that despite the abundance of data, they are separated and thus need to be consolidated. "At the moment we have a big data source mapping going on together with the Economic Planning Unit which will give us the full picture," he said. The data-mapping exercise has to be done in different stages and the initial work was to identify the type and location of available data. The next step will be to analyse how the data can be used, and where are gaps are. "Then you start filling those gaps," said Olsen. He also said that for the first time, Unicef's five-year country programme has been linked to the Tenth Malaysia Plan. "This is very important because we have been out of synchronisation before. "We have had two-year country programmes, three-year country programmes. They often started in the middle of a National Plan. "Finally, we are very much synchronised and we are supporting the ambitions of the Tenth Malaysia Plan. It is quite easy because the Plan is very good from the social perspective," he added. RIGHTS OF CHILDREN Speaking on children, Olsen remarked that generally they are seen often only as the property of their parents, to acquire their human rights only when they grow up. "It is not like that. Actually the world has agreed by signing the Convention of the Rights of the Child that children are also human and they have inherited rights. "And these rights include the right to health, the right to education and the right to a childhood. Children need to be children," he stressed, adding that all children should be treated well and given the very best. Olsen also firmly believes that childhood is actually a window to opportunity. "If you miss that window of opportunity, you are going to pay for it later, and it is going to cost much more. "You are going to pay both in terms of money and also in human misery," he explained. EXTREME PRESSURES Olsen also touched on the fact that today's children are under extreme pressure, which can be seen in their psychological well-being. This is not only happening in Malaysia, he said, and in other countries the pressures are more extreme. He cited the example of suicide among young people, and noted high rates in Korea and Japan. There is a need to create a balance, he said, and there should be an opportunity for education. "The more educated you are, the more possibilities you will have in life. "At the same time you need to be able to play, because you learn a lot by playing. "You learn how to interact with others and you also learn to respect each other through interaction. "If you do not learn that, then a lot of education that you get will be wasted," he said. Olsen said the challenge is to create full human beings out of our children, and reminded parents to allocate time for their children as they grow up. "It is not easy to be a parent but you need to create that space. If your maids are taking care of your children until they are teenagers, then suddenly you try to communicate with your children, it is not going to work. "The gap is already there. You do not have that communication open anymore. This is something that needs to be established, at an early age and needs to grow as children grow," said Olsen, himself a parent to a 25-year old son and a 22-year old daughter. DROPOUTS Commenting the Malaysian government’s budget allocation for education, Olson said he is worried about dropout rates. He told Bernama that data made available to Unicef showed that some 17,000 children are dropping out every year between lower secondary and upper secondary. Predominantly, poor children are dropping out and according to Olsen, when this happens, it perpetuates poverty. "If you want to create a prosperous nation, an industrialised nation by 2020, you need to turn back that negative spiral. "You need to make it possible for children to continue schooling. "I think this is a serious issue that is not unknown, but we just need to find remedies for it," he said. Olsen views the 10th Malaysia Plan as a good platform for addressing disparities, particularly among children. However, he cautioned that developing the right policies and having the right legislation will not suffice without the policies being enacted upon. KAMPUNG NUMBAK Olsen spoke with much enthusiasm about Unicef's pilot-project education centre for undocumented children in Sabah. Launched at the beginning of this year, the centre is located in the coastal village of Kampung Numbak, about 8 kilometres from Kota Kinabalu. He described it as a first step toward addressing a very serious situation that has an impact on the lives of thousands of undocumented children living on Malaysian soil. Many of the children, he said, were born in Malaysia and so were their parents. "They may have a grandfather who was classified as a refugee so they are also classified as refugees. "It can also be that their parents simply have not registered their children. They may be Malaysians, but they do not have the right documentation," he said. The education centre in Kampung Numbak is an effort involving several key parties, namely the Ministry of Education, Unicef and the Sabah Task Force. On the day it opened its door, Olsen said, 300 children almost “flew in” to register as students. The children, whose homes are built on stilts in the waters off Kampung Numbak, have not seen the inside of a classroom before, he said. "They were growing up without education. According to Olson, there are about 44,000 undocumented children in Malaysia who are not only out of school but also outside the reach of services. -- BERNAMA malaysia