The Girl-Child and Government Service Provision.pdf - Tanzania ...

The Costa Rican situationThe socio-economic pictureThe Costa Rican state seeks, through certain public policies,to ensure the access of the child population to basicservices, defined as health, potable water, education andhousing. The purpose is to strengthen a social networkthat ensures the well-being of children and their families,working as a support tool in the fight for their rights.However, governments in the last twenty years have resortedto approaches to development that have focusedon macro-economic stability, considering economic developmentas an appendix of economic growth. Thus, the socialpolicy must prioritise the strengthening of social developmentas an objective of economic policy. Juridicalreform has contributed to this in the issues of children’srights, as it has expressed the commitment of the CostaRican state.General data from Costa Rica’s Ministry of the Treasuryindicate that these social policies demand from the statethe investment of important resources. With respect tothe GDP, the proportion of these resources in the period1999–2001 went from 5.5 per cent to 6.4 per cent in socialassistance; from 4.7 per cent to 5.5 per cent in health;and from 4.1 per cent to 5.2 per cent in education (seeTable 3-1).Despite this investment made by the state, the situationof minors in the cantons studied reflects a series of factorsthat lead to questioning the effectiveness of the policiesin the area of children. One can note, among others,deterioration in financial income, lack of employmentsources, increase in cost of life, lack of job training and loweducational level. These aspects contribute to the disintegrationor disorganisation of the families, and children arethe most affected population; socio-economic deteriorationcan be noted in the Chorotega and Northern Huetarzones, where the conditions of life and access to basichealth services for both boys and girls—and generallyspeaking, for all the inhabitants of the area—are limited.The health sectorSixty years ago Costa Rica made a clear choice for socialguarantees as the basis for social peace and economicgrowth. The Constitution established the Costa Rican SocialSecurity Fund as the entity in charge of watching forthe services of health and social prevision.In the mid-nineties, in order to achieve better access bythe Costa Rican child population to health services, theimplementation of the Basic Teams for Integral HealthCare (EBAIS) started as a mechanism to decentralisehealth services and bring them closer to the people. It isworth noting that the rate of infant mortality decreasedfrom 14.8 per thousand in 1990 to 10.2 per thousand in2000 (see Table 3–2).A series of programmes is currently promoting adequatefeeding for children. Still, these programmes do not considerthe fact that investment in school lunchrooms is inadequate.Much of the child population does not receivefood at home, and they expect the school to offer feeding.Data such as that in Table 3–2, which show a decrease inthe percentages of malnourished children, do not meanthat the problem has been solved.Table 3–1. Social investment as a percentage of GDP, 1998–2002Sector19981999200020012002EducationHealthSocial assistanceHousingTotal4.474.775.881.5616.854.104.735.501.4615.924.705.025.961.4917.315.155.386.301.6718.695.495.655.861.7318.89Source: Development’s Observatory, University of Costa Rica, 2003The Girl-Child and Government Service Provision 57