Homepage > Thai Youth Issues > Future in peril

Published on Jan 23, 2002 Bangkok Post

The government is focusing its efforts on economic recovery while ignoring a whole host of problems affecting young people. A risky strategy, say participants at a recent seminar on children's issues held to find out why no action is being taken .

ALONGKORN PARIVUDHIPHONGS

If the future of the nation lies in the hands of today's children, what lies ahead looks grim indeed. Last month, a 14-year-old girl shocked the country by admitting she had vented her anger by drowning two small children in a public toilet. Not long before that, a group of junior high-school boys were arrested for carrying out a gang rape.

Meanwhile, reports about violent brawls, involving knives and guns, between students from rival technical colleges and riots at youth remand homes have become so frequent they no longer shock us.

Story after story. Victim after victim. Our children seem to have become more violent in both form and degree. What is happening? Is this the result of an increasingly selfish, materialistic society? Or related to a decline in moral values?

The underlying causes run much deeper than that, say children's rights advocates.

According to Khemporn Wiroonraphan of the Foundation for Child Development (FCD), the problems are getting more severe by the day because successive governments pay only lip service to the needs of young people. Khemporn, who has been dealing with children's issues for over a decade now, was speaking at a seminar held earlier this month in Bangkok.

``In order to help the children we need a long-term policy and practical goals,'' added Dr Yongyuth Wongpiromsarn from the Department of Mental Health.

Such recommendations are nothing new. But the fact that policymakers are not listening to them has prompted children's rights activists to try and find out what has gone wrong.

INADEQUATE DATA

One of their biggest hurdles, they say, is the lack of reliable, regularly updated statistics about Thai children.

``The government does not have adequate and reliable statistics that accurately reflect the situation, be they about child malnutrition, child labour, HIV/Aids orphans, drug addicts or school drop-outs,'' said Suwanna Tulyawasinphong, a researcher with the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI).

``Often the only statistics available to us are way out of date,'' she complained.

For example, National Statistical Office (NSO) figures about schoolchildren aged 13 to 17 were last computed in 2000 while the latest information about those aged 11 to 12 dates from 1994. And recently, according to Suwanna, the NSO indicated that it would no longer be collecting statistics on citizens under the age of 15.

``This is because the government focuses only on economic indicators, not on the demographic structure vis a vis children,'' Suwanna said.

Apart from being years out of date, government statistics often do not correspond to the real situation on the ground, said Khemporn of FCD. National statistics on child malnutrition, for example, show that the problem has been alleviated, she added. ``But from our field work we know that many kids are suffering from hunger and malnourishment to a severe, even life-threatening degree.''

Children, especially those in rural areas, are still born underweight and are afflicted with conditions such as anaemia, parasites, beriberi, skin diseases and night blindness. Statistics on abandoned children and those with mental problems which may lead to anti-social behaviour are also sorely deficient, Khemporn added.

``The lack of information and statistics has caused these problems to be overlooked altogether,'' she said.

POOR HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM

Already below standard, the health and welfare situation for youngsters was exacerbated by the onset of the economic crisis in mid-1997, said Dr Nittaya Kotchabhakdi, director of the National Institute for Child and Family Development at Mahidol University.

``Many more babies were born underweight,'' she said. ``And many more kids will grow up as slow learners.''

According to research she carried out in 1997, 44 percent of Thai children aged six to 12 were of average intelligence with IQs of below 90. The regions worse affected were the North and Northeast. Follow-up research has confirmed her previous findings.

``This is a result of poor nutrition at an early age,'' she said, adding that it is often too late to help these kids when they get older. ``Prevention is better than cure and we should be paying more attention to the health of our newly born children.''

FAMILY BREAKDOWN

Economic migration and family breakdown often endanger children's health, said Khemporn.

``We found one family in which the 73-year-old granny was taking care of seven children whose parents had left to work in the city. What if something happened to the granny?'' asked Khemporn, adding that all seven kids were malnourished and slow-learning.

The soaring divorce rate affects children's well-being too, she added. According to the Department of Local Administration, 61,377 couples divorced in 1999 and 70,888 did so in 2000. These figures exclude married couples who separate but don't bother to divorce, and unmarried couples who split up.

More and more children are being abandoned, she said, judging from statistics on admissions to state-run orphanages, and the number of street kids has also been rising since the onset of the economic crisis.

SCHOOL SYSTEM

When home is no longer a safe place to be, many children seek refuge at school. But there they are sometimes let down _ badly.

Last year, a kid was drowned because a teacher forced him to swim during a school camp. Another died after being crushed by a steel gate in the school compound. A third from electrocution. There are also frequent reports of teachers sexually abusing or raping pupils and of rampant drug abuse among secondary-school kids.

``We can't expect help from schools any more because the children's problems have become more severe, more complex,'' commented Dr Yongyuth.

DRUGS AND VIOLENCE

According to the Ministry of Public Health, four percent of drug users nationwide are children aged between five and nine _ and this is apparently the result of social breakdown.

``Kids under seven are getting involved in drug trafficking since the legal penalties are much less severe,'' said Suwanna of the TDRI, adding that the number of juvenile criminal cases has increased by a staggering 46 percent since 1996.

``The degree of violence is increasing and the public tends to identify the children as culprits in need of punishment instead of kids who need our help and understanding,'' Khemporn added.

CHANGE IN VALUES

Over the past two decades the way in which young people view sex has altered dramatically. Nowadays many teenagers are hesitant to say ``no'' to unsafe or pre-marital sex and this has led to an increase in HIV/Aids cases, unwanted pregnancies, abortions and abandoned babies, said Dr Nittaya from Mahidol University.

Community spirit is also disappearing due to the breakdown of village societies and the extended family, she said. Hence, Aids orphans are increasingly treated as outcasts and problematic teenagers are sent to remand homes where they tend to become hardened offenders and so are even more despised by their communities.

``We must question what is happening to our society,'' Dr Nittaya urged.

CHILD LABOUR

``Some children work more than eight hours a day and don't get even one day off a week. But the government has failed to locate many of these sweat shops so it's hard to protect these children,'' Khemporn said.

According to Suwanna of the TDRI, the number of Thai child labourers is decreasing thanks to the compulsory-education system, the building of more schools in remote areas and a drop in the birth rate.

But Thai children are being replaced by those from ethnic minority groups and by kids from neighbouring countries who, because they are illegal immigrants, are often even more seriously abused by sweat-shop operators.

``We recently rescued 30 Burmese children who had been working in a sewing factory for years without payment,'' Khemporn said. ``Many had been beaten regularly. Others were sexually abused.

``Our society ignores the plight of these children because they are from other countries. But they should be protected no matter what nationality they are.''

STATE INACTION AND NEGLIGENCE

The low budget set aside for child-development projects shows that policymakers are only paying lip service to the issue, Khemporn said.

In Bangkok, a city of at least 10 million people, the government, or agencies under its supervision like the BMA, operates 26 youth centres, a national library, 20 public libraries, one zoo, 14 public parks, a science museum, and 1,079 sports fields.

In contrast, according to the Metropolitan Police Command, there are 1,396 listed places of entertainment _ pubs, discotheques, karaoke bars, ``cafes'' and massage parlours.

A host of similar venues are unregistered, many of them being illegal operations.

According to a study conducted in 1997 by Assoc Prof Sombat Karnjanakit, youth centres in Bangkok were generally underfunded, lacked sufficient skilled personnel and got little support from the communities in which they were located.

Dr Sombat also reported that many city kids had little interest in the centres because activities there were unappealing and were rarely focused properly on target groups.

``We have to start providing a better environment for our kids,'' Khemporn urged.

EXPLOITATIVE MEDIA

The local media mainly treat children as targets for advertising while giving little attention to their opinions and needs and to content which stimulates their interest and creativity, said Assoc Prof Ubolrat Siriyuvasak of the Faculty of Communication Arts, Chulalongkorn University.

Her study, ``The portrayal of children in local newspapers and television'', carried out 2000, found that only 10.27 percent of the coverage on newspaper front pages concerned children _ and most of that was negative.

It's the same situation with TV, she said. Breaking news about children mostly concerns crime and violence and the emphasis is always on sensational incidents.

Her study shows that many media organisations regularly violate children's rights. While some attempt is made to conceal the identity of young victims and perpetrators of crime, their cover is too often blown. And the language used in reports on rapes and sexual assaults often titillates to the point of being pornographic.

Dr Ubolrat would like to see the media treating children with more respect and giving them more space to express their opinions, needs and creative abilities.

Children from more affluent backgrounds do manage to find their own space on the Internet, via email, chat rooms and posting comments on Web boards. But the Net brings with it another set of problems when you consider that more than 400,000 pornography Web sites are available to gratify teenagers' curiosity.

``It's important to cultivate greater media literacy in our youngsters. This could help them select good content from bad,'' suggested Suwanna, the TDRI researcher.

But we shouldn't wait around for the government to intervene and tackle these problems because by the time that happens it may be far too late, said Khemporn.

``Everyone in this society of ours needs to take action. After all, it's our own children who need help.''