UK plummets to in global childrens rights rankings in one year

[slightlyglitterbrained]

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/uk-global-childrens-rights-rankings-plummets-child-unicef-a7734426.html?amp

From the article:
"The Index, which assesses countries’ commitments to children’s rights relative to available resources, found that economically prosperous countries are not necessarily outperforming the rest. Poorer countries such as Thailand and Tunisia featured in the top 10, while more developed countries came far lower, with the UK and New Zealand among the bottom-ten global performers."

I am sorry, but any index which places Tunisia above New Zealand in terms of child welfare has got some serious weighting issues going on.

It reminds me of those daft women's-welfare indices which do stupid things like put Rwanda in the top 3 because Rwanda has an unusually large number of female MPs (largely because of the iron control the govt. has over the political process) and the index gives a massively disproportionate weighting to that particular factor--that kind of thing (I am quoting from memory, but that is the kind of thing you see in poorly designed weighting systems).

www.kidsrightsindex.org

LOLz. Egypt is at 15---you know, that country with its penchant for lopping off little girls' external genitalia.

Mary how much do you know about New Zealand's social issues though? From what I have heard, it's pretty bad there if you're poor.

It's all very well "lolzing" but SOMETHING has caused the drop.

OK, fair enough, LOLz was a bit childish ;)

But honestly, I don't need to have gone to New Zealand to be capable of applying my common sense about its social welfare issues compared to Egypt or Tunisia. The thing about these kinds of surveys is that they give the impression of being designed by someone who is trying to make a political point ("Let's design an index that will make the UK look as bad as possible so we can shame them into doing something-or-other.") There are social issues in the UK, but this kind of overt agenda just breeds cynicism.

Mary I'm not great at this kind of thing...how is it all worked out?

Serious concerns have been raised about structural discrimination in the UK, including Muslim children facing increased discrimination following recent anti-terrorism measures

From that article.

I have a major issue with that TBH.
I don't care where other countries are or not. I do care about the drop because it says something has drastically changed in the Uk in the last year.
So it seems that one of the issue is that children are discriminated upon due to their religion. How is that acceptable??

Blue I also care...because it IS worrying that some children are being discriminated against.

It's not OK but I bet there are people thinking "Oh it's only the Muslims"

I just BET there are!

Yes and also, if children are being dis rimâtes against, you can be sure that adults are too.

Add that other decisions such as the Ines asking companies with re than 250 people to release data about wage vs ethnicity, youcan zee wherevthis is all going.

I think it's extremely worrying. As someone said upthread, its the WHY the uk has dropped so much that is important. And that why is very concerning.

If you look at the methodology

According to the CRC Committee, New Zealand (158th), the United Kingdom (156th) Italy (83rd) and Luxembourg (56th), for example,
could do more to improve the enabling environment they have built for children’s rights. These wealthy countries should be able to
invest more in children’s rights, but fail to do so sufficiently.
Thailand (8th) and Tunisia (9th) on the other hand deserve honourable mentions. These countries rank relatively high compared to their
economic status, as they do exceptionally well in cultivating an enabling environment for child rights. Thailand for examples scores
‘good’ on the enabling legislation for children’s rights. In the 2017 ranking Thailand even climbed from rank 21 in the KidsRights Index
2016 to rank 8, especially owing to improved scores on primary and secondary school participation in domain 3 ‘Education). Tunisia
scores well on domain 5 ‘the enabling environment for child rights. The country also has a low adolescent births rate, therefore scoring
relatively high on domain 4 ‘Protection’ (rank 22).

Essentially if you start out rich and high you must then improve or fall.

The UK and Italy as described basically didn't improve enough. This index isn't a measure of children's actual rights it is a measure of improvements of children's rights weighted by the wealth of the country.

So essentially the UK, New Zealand and Italy didn't implement enough new rights measured against what the UN expects.

It is saying if I got B last year and did the same amount of work and the same exam score this year I get F-. If I got a D last year and score 10% more this year I get an A.

I suspect the real problem here is the reporter at the Independent read the numbers, didn't bother to understand what they meant, and freaked out at having something to bash the government with.

While its not fake news per se it is badly reported by someone who can barely grasp the numbers.

The low rating is driven entirely by the "child rights environment" score. Apparently our "child rights environment" is at the same level as Afghanistan and is worse than Syria, Iran and Iraq amongst others. Ludicrous.