After months of fevered anticipation, years of stadium building and more pre tournament injuries than you can shake a tweaked achilles at, the World Cup officially kicks off this afternoon.
As is customary, the hosts, South Africa, play in the opening game. The Bafana Bafana ("the boys the boys” in Southern African language Nguni) take on Mexico in the Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg at 3pm. Who’s going to win? Well, I’m no Alan Hansen, so I’m not even going to try to tell you how many goals the Rainbow Nation are going to knock past the El Equipo Azteca – or indeed vice versa.
14-year-old Tshepo Mashego plays football at the UNICEF supported SCORE project at the Thubelihle township, outside Witbank in South Africa.
© UNICEF South Africa/2010/Hearfield
One type of goal UNICEF does have marked expertise in, however, are the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These are eight goals – including eradicating extreme poverty, ensuring environmental sustainability and achieving universal primary education – which 189 countries signed up to in 2000, pledging to achieve by 2015. It was the largest gathering of world leaders in history – a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a step change for the world’s poor.
UNICEF not only supports the MDGs, but we have taken them on as part of our mandate. So, over the course of the World Cup we’ll be using the tournament to shine a spotlight on countries around the world on the UNICEF UK blog by examining the progress they’re making on the MDGs, and looking at what still needs to be done. Each blog will focus on one match and one of the eight MDGs. Not to name and shame (and not because the MDGs include the word ‘Goals’ in them either), but because this September an MDG summit takes place at the UN in New York. From now until then UNICEF will be focusing the world’s attention on these vital issues, helping ensure that a concerted effort is made in September to make a final push to put it right for children and achieve the MDGs by 2015.
To this end, UNICEF UK will soon be launching a campaign to ask David Cameron to attend the UN meeting himself and ensure the UK Government helps achieve a fairer future for children around the world. Find out more about this campaign and how you can take action by signing up to our Campaign Network.
So, back to South Africa vs Mexico… for this match I’ve chosen to look at MDG 4: Reduce Child Mortality. MDG 4 asks countries to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.
The good news for Mexico is that they’ve already achieved this aim. In 1990, 45 of every 1,000 children aged under 5 died, but this was reduced to 17 out of 1,000 in 2008.
South Africa, however, has actually seen its under-5 mortality rate increase from 56 in every 1,000 in 1990 to 67 in 2008.
Across the world, while child mortality rates have been more than halved in Northern Africa, South-Eastern Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean from 1990 to 2008, the same period has seen Sub-Saharan Africa’s child mortality rates decline by 22% - well short of the 66% target. In fact, MDG 4 is the most off track of all the MDGs.
UNICEF works in various ways to help countries improve child mortality rates: by providing high-impact health and nutrition interventions in partnership with governments and the WHO, by working to improve proper infant feeding and breast feeding, by increasing access to clean water and sanitation, and by responding rapidly to emergencies.
If you’d like to help UNICEF help countries like South Africa achieve the MDGs, you can make a donation to our work or join our Campaigns Network to find out how you can lobby the UK Government to put it right for children.
Hugh Reilly is Web Editor at UNICEF UK.