Leaving a Sound World for Our Children

20 November is celebrated as World Children’s Day. It is a day to celebrate childhood, but also to tally up the ledger of promises we have made, and broken, to the youngest among us. In Bangladesh roughly one in three people is a child, and more than 56 million children live here today. That is not only a demographic fact; it is a moral imperative: the shape of our politics, economy and environment will be the shape of their lives.

When we talk about “leaving a sound world” for children we mean far more than clean air or fewer floods. We mean leaving institutions that protect childhood, social norms that nourish empathy and responsibility, and an economy that does not require children to pay the price of adult failures. Right now, several trends show how fragile that inheritance is.

There are those children who are denied education and safety by climate shocks at hand. UNICEF indicates that Bangladeshi children have been unable to attend school due to climate-related risks, and this has caused them to miss weeks of schooling because of floods, cyclones, and extreme heat. There are serious long-term implications to these disruptions depending on loss of instructional time undermines academic achievement, forcing families to go to child labor, and making it more likely that a child will have stopped going to school altogether.

In addition, children are involved in working due to economic vulnerability. The results of the National Child labor Survey in Bangladesh and international observers show that child labor is still widespread in the number of sectors and exists still as a major challenge even with improvements in school enrolment. The COVID-19 crisis increased the dependence of house payments on the earnings of children, and the restoration process after the pandemic has not been even. In cases where children are called upon to help in providing sustenance to the home, their rights to education, leisure and certain safe development are negatively impacted.

Moreover, poor nutrition still stunts lives. While Bangladesh has achieved notable gains over past decades, a sizable share of under-five children remains stunted or undernourished, a condition that scars physical growth, cognitive development and lifetime opportunity. Tackling malnutrition means addressing poverty, women’s health, sanitation and food systems together; it cannot be solved by isolated programs.

Finally, the megatrends shaping the twenty-first century, climate change, rapid urbanization and digital transformation, bring both opportunity and risk. UNICEF’s global assessment cautions that unless we act now, far more children will face extreme heat, floods and other climate hazards by mid-century; decisions taken today will determine whether that future is one of protection or peril.

The necessity of leaving a sound world could be interpreted as a practical and political project, but more so personal and social. There is the need to have a child-centered social safety net. In response to child labor and early marriage, social protection schemes targeting families in crisis can be initiated. The real-time interventions include cash transfers, school meal programs, fee waivers and post-disaster emergency benefits, which aim to maintain child enrolment and put children out of hazardous work. These interventions operate as precautionary investment; the precautionary expenditure by the present is to reduce the social costs that would be incurred later in the years to come. Our schools must be built in a manner that they are resistant to climatic shocks as well as responsive to the needs of children. This would involve establishment of disaster-resilient classrooms, catch-up learning programs after natural disasters and a curriculum that instills their civic empathies, critical thinking, climate literacy and other essential skills that can help them to play their roles in rebuilding their future.

Child nutrition should be put at the forefront of the concerns. Nutrition enhancement programs should include maternal health, water and sanitation, and economic empowerment of women. At the community level, programs like the support of breast-feeding to the school feeding also have a positive relationship with health and learning. The rights of children should be truly respected and with decisive action. Inspections of child labor, community stalking and strong encouragement from the families that are tempted or coerced into sending children to work need to increase. At the same time, we must support their legal protections by all possible options such as decent employment among adults, free healthcare, education etc.

In addition, the inclusion of children’s voices and requirements are essential to have intergenerational bargains. Children are not to be perceived as a passive recipient of policy. They should be considered when making policies based on their views on safety, mobility, and their future. The institutions of youth councils and school forums, in addition to participatory planning mechanisms, help to strengthen policy rigor and give a stake to children, in their future inherited societies.

None of these are cheap, and none are quick fixes. But they are politically affordable when we reframe spending as investment. Consider the cost of inaction: a generation that is undereducated, ill-nourished or climate-battered produces weaker economies, greater social instability, and higher welfare costs later on. A sound world is thus both compassionate and pragmatic.

As sociologists we also need to name cultural tasks. A sound world requires norms that prize collective responsibility. That means adults modelling restraint in consumption, fairness in opportunity, and humility in public life. It means schools and religious spaces teaching stewardship of the planet and compassion for neighbors, not only credentials or rituals.

Journalists and opinion pages have a role that goes beyond reporting: they are part of the public curriculum. On World Children’s Day, newspapers can lift children’s voices, interrogate policy gaps, and hold institutions to account. Readers decide who will pressure the local government to maintain climate-resilient schools, employers to clean up supply chains, and national leaders to fund social protection and nutrition.

If there is one political truth it is that investing in children is contestable in the short term but inevitable in the long run. Politicians will promise tax cuts and visible projects. Few will campaign on the less glamorous, but transformative, tasks of strengthening social protection, reforming labor markets, or funding catch-up learning. Citizens must keep these items on the agenda.

World Children’s Day should be a reminder that childhood is not an appendage of adult life, it is the beginning of everything we hope to become. A sound world for our children is also a sound bargain for our society: less suffering now, more creativity and productivity later, and a stronger moral claim in the future.

Today, let’s take a moment to ask, what will the ledger say in ten, twenty years? Will our children inherit a planet where schooling was protected, hunger was rare, and childhood was honored? Or will they inherit a world where we outsourced responsibility to convenience and short-term politics?

If we want the former, we must act now, fund resilience, protect rights, fix nutrition, and, above all, listen to the children we are meant to serve. Their future is not a footnote to our present. It is the ledger we will one day be judged by.


Jannatul Ferdous Ety is pursuing
an MSS degree in the Department of Sociology, Bangladesh University
of Professionals (BUP), Mirpur
Cantonment, Dhaka.