Ian BoyneBRUCE GOLDING dropped his partisan hat last Sunday at the funeral for the St. Thomas Six when he made the statement that "the police cannot be in every yard and home" and, therefore, each person had to be his brother's keeper.
It was refreshing to hear a Jamaica Labour Party politician breaking with the propaganda line that Security Minister Peter Phillips is solely responsible for reducing the country's high crime rate. It was refreshing to hear a politician speaking without seeking to extract some political advantage from the media spotlight.
Peter Phillips will not be able to stop enraged or estranged lovers from maiming and
murdering their companions. Nor will Derrick Smith if he becomes Security Minister. The death penalty is no deterrent to out-of-control lovers in a fit of jealousy and rage. People hell-bent on revenge will "take out a whole family," as Beenie Man once proudly sang in a popular
dancehall hit.
These crimes have nothing to do with poor people's wanting to escape starvation. Bruce Golding touched on some key issues in his address to the funeral last Sunday, as did the Prime Minister-designate Portia Simpson Miller, who called for spiritual solutions as part of the measures to deal with what she called "this encroaching wickedness and savagery" being meted out to our children. The secularists might scoff at the invoking of the spiritual but in their narrow-mindedness and myopia they lose sight of some critical facts.
I use just one document to illustrate my point about the absolute centrality of the issue of values and attitudes, or social capital, in national development. I use as my point of reference the 'Situation Analysis of the Status of Jamaican Children' prepared by UNICEF for the launch two Wednesdays ago of the State of the World's Children Report 2006. The document contains some disturbing statistics, including the fact that we have murdered over 300 children in the last five years.
But as I read the document what struck me is how much of what is needed to protect our children and to enhance their welfare lies in our control as individuals and as a community. Golding was making the same point essentially. He told the large gathering that, "We cannot leave the care of children exclusively to the biological parents. It has to become the responsibility of society to protect children from being mistreated and to intervene when necessary."
Politicians must take on these national issues and do so in a way which has nothing to do with gaining one-upmanship and scoring political points about which party loves children more and which party's policies have victimised children. Politicians, to make sense to the uncommitted, must start going soft on the palpable propaganda, and address national concerns in a reasoned way.
There are some broad, moral issues which must be addressed as a matter of urgency. Peter Phillips has addressed some of them, calling attention repeatedly to the number of girls having
children out of wedlock, and the marginsalisation of males due to irresponsible attitudes. Portia Simpson Miller, in several speeches, has talked about the need for a moral revolution and has emphasised the importance of moral grounding. The People's National Party (PNP) and the JLP need to be united on this.
The UNICEF paper on Jamaican children shows that girls 10-19 years are almost three times more likely to become infected with HIV than a boy of similar age. One of the reasons is that they are having sex with older men 50 per cent of young women report having sex with partners up to ten years older than them. The older, promis-cuous men are passing on the disease to the young girls.
ECONOMISTIC PEOPLE
The narrow economistic
people who ignore variables other than economics will say it's the poverty driving the young girls to engage in sex with older men, and they are right. But that's only part of the truth. For there are young girls who are not succumbing and who are maintaining their sexual dignity. Not every young girl is bowing (take that anyway you want!)
What makes the difference? What makes a poor girl who wants money to go to evening class to 'do some subjects', or to help her pay rent not have unprotected sex with an older man (who demands to "ride bare back)?
What makes a young girl choose to suffer the embarrassment of not having the 'Bling' clothes, or not being able to buy food and maintain herself rather than sell out to a man with his money? It is her values. And this country had better hope there are increasing numbers of young girls who, in the absence of the longed-for economic growth, will not bow just to 'eat a food'.
The UNICEF paper shows that nearly 20 per cent of births in Jamaica are by adolescents. Says the paper: "In other words, a child gives birth to a child in one out of five births. Had all teenage pregnancies been brought to terms, the rate would be even higher." Early sexual initiation, forced sex, transactional sex, low contraceptive use (because of male cultural norms), among other things, account for the high incidence of teenage pregnancy.
These issues don't get major attention by the politicians and the talk-show hosts who are obsessed with interest rates, the stock market, the exchange rate, macroeconomic stability along with a litany of political trivia. They don't see that our crime problem is predominantly a problem of high teenage pregnancy and the predominance of female-headed homes and absentee fathers. And every time the narrow economistic people tell me about the lack of economic growth fuelling these problems, I will agree readily but say they are not presenting the full equation.
For people under those same situations of deprivation, economic marginalisation and rank poverty escape the worst consequences. Why? Because of their values and attitudes. So it makes sense to work as assiduously on that while we await the economic miracle to be performed by some future politician. Let's try to save some more of these youth while we wait for the jobs to be created by those waving the Magic Wand.
In the meantime, we have to deal with the reality that, in the words of the UNICEF report, "A birth by a child puts two children at risk as teenage pregnancy often leads to complication in pregnancy and delivery, lack of care and support for the new-born and too often exclusion from educational and professional opportunities."
About one-third of those who get pregnant between 15 and 24 are in an educational institution and only 34 per cent of those do return afterward. "Once they leave school they are not prepared for parenting and poverty often pushes young mothers into transactional sexual relationships with multiple partners to obtain the resources necessary to support their children and themselves. This further increases the mother's vulnerability to exploitation and domestic violence as well as child abuse."
If some of these politicians would take time off from their fun and frolicking to read reports like these, perhaps they might start talking some sense.
The UNICEF report shows that only 29 per cent of the poorest 10 per cent of children in Jamaica in the age-group 17-18 are in school Daily attendance is only 62 per cent for the poorest quintile. Sixty-two per cent of the absence is due to "lack of money", says the report. Having the school places, the finest equipment, the right teacher-student ratio, the best curriculum and best-paid teachers is not the total answer to our educational problems.
Ah, economic growth needed again, you say. And I agree again. But that's only half the story. "Another factor (for the high absenteeism) is the combination of a high percentage of female headed households (47.5 in 2004 of all Jamaican households) caring for a large number of children and persons with limited resources. Simply put, a Jamaican child living in a female-headed household has access to a smaller amount of resources than her/his friends in other types of households". Where are the men?
These are the issues politicians must take up. And they need to see the connection between these crucial issues, economic growth and macroeconomic stability.
But very revealing, too, was the study on parenting in Jamaica done by the Planning Institute of Jamaica. This eye-opening study shows that the most frequently shared household activity with children was chores (59 per cent) while only 44.8 per cent ever read a book or show a picture to a child, only 32.3 per cent sings songs with them, only 33.4 play games with their children, only 36.1 per cent take them out, only 35.2 tell them stories and less than 50 per cent talk to them about moral issues.
Now is there any wonder that our crime, corruption and our poverty rate is so high?
While we wait for the Economic Utopia being promised by politicians in Opposition, I say let us try, in our individual ways and as a society ,to see what we can do save ourselves.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email him at ianboyne1@yahoo.com
