00:10Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Igris. Welcome to Consider This.
00:14This is the show where we want you to consider and reconsider what you know of the news of the
00:18day.
00:18A new study by UNICEF and the Sabah State Government is offering one of the most comprehensive assessments yet
00:24of children's well-being in the state. This is called the Sabah Child Well-Being Index and it
00:30looks beyond household income to examine how children in the state are growing, living and
00:36learning and they're measuring this across several key indicators. So joining me on the show to tell
00:42us more about the report I have Fakhani Muhammad Nur who is the social policy specialist at UNICEF
00:49Malaysia. Fakhani, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. So most of the discussions
00:54that I've been hearing about children, the well-being of children, actually the focus
00:58specifically on poverty or household income. I'm really interested in the UNICEF research because
01:07of its broader measure. So can you begin our conversation today by telling us a little bit
01:11about the research? What prompted the need for this research through from UNICEF's perspective
01:18perspective and why was it important to measure this index beyond traditional metrics like income
01:26and poverty? Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Melissa, for having me. On the first part of the question, I
01:32guess, to answer you bluntly, again, Sabah is a relatively young population. I mean, we have about 1.06 million
01:41children in comparison to other states, of course, which gives a broader development story when thinking
01:48about children, right? And the second part is that while there's a lot of economic progress
01:54for Sabah, there's still a lot of deprivation faced by children, especially when talking about children
02:00with disability, indigenous children, undocumented or stateless children. So to that end, I guess, UNICEF
02:08and the unit perancangan economy, UPenn Sabah, we developed this index to have a more comprehensive
02:15and multidimensional view of how children are growing, living and playing, right? And to answer
02:23your question, your second part of your question on income, well, income is a very important indicator
02:30for well-being. It is not the only indicator and especially so for children, right? For children,
02:36they do not experience income in the way that adults do or perceive income in the way that adults
02:41do. So let me take an example. Children that is living in a household that's beyond the poverty
02:49line might still be living malnourished, might still face bullying, for example, might still
02:56feel socially excluded and all of these different metrics, right? And that's affecting the ability
03:03ability to grow and the ability to thrive. And I guess to help this, right, we developed
03:11an index that's more aligned to the conventions of the rights of the child. That's something
03:16that's a bit more rights-based versus income and welfare-based.
03:20Definitely. All right. So talk us through some of the findings from the index.
03:27I think you rightly pointed out there's a lot of different indicators actually under the Sabah
03:32Chawal being indexed. But if I could just narrow the discussion to three broad narratives, the
03:37first one is that we notice that there's a lot of growth in Sabah, right? There's a lot
03:43of progress. But that doesn't mean that there is no gaps and there's still potential gaps.
03:50So for example, we see that there's improved in access towards education, improved in access
03:55towards healthcare. But the same children who have access to healthcare might not be eating
04:03well at home. So one in three, for example, children are not getting the right nutrition
04:08at home. They're not eating sufficiently as well. So when thinking about deprivation or
04:15thinking about well-being, that's one of the important findings that we found. The second
04:22one is on how different domains are actually interlinked. Different deprivations are interlinked.
04:29So when talking about nutrition, the same topic. The child who's malnourished or hungry is
04:37not able to then go to school and learn, right? I mean, they face barriers towards learning
04:43and participating in school. At the same time, they need more time to learn. Therefore, they
04:49are not able to then rest and play, right? So if you look at across the different domains
04:55on the Sabah Chawal well-being index, we also notice that there are linkages. And 78% of children
05:02that we surveyed out of the 3,700 children that we surveyed, they're either facing one deprivation
05:11or two deprivation, but they're actually facing three deprivations at the same time. So it's
05:20overlapping. The last bit, I guess, before passing it back to you, is that the deprivation is much
05:28higher among undocumented or stateless children, as well as children with disabilities. And I'll just
05:33give one example. If you look at the health domain, more than 55% of children were able to meet
05:40the
05:40health domain, meaning that they are able to complete their vaccination, they get access to
05:45healthcare, they're not facing mental health problems. But when you look at undocumented or
05:50stateless children, that number drops to 0.6%. That just shows the stark comparison between
05:58undocumented or stateless children and their well-being versus children in Sabah.
06:03All right. Well, thank you for laying out those three key themes. But one of the findings that stood
06:10out for me personally was the fact that children's well-being in Sabah generally declined in adolescence.
06:16So as they grow older, it turns out that they're not, you know, the well-being declines across
06:21several key indicators. Can we talk a little bit about that? Why does it seem that adolescence,
06:26that period of adolescence appears to be such a vulnerable period for children in Sabah?
06:31Okay. I want to emphasize that actually for adolescents, their perception of well-being
06:37also becomes a little bit more complex. So when we introduce or try to understand well-being
06:43from their perspective, we actually ask additional questions. And for that, let me just give an
06:48example. For under the health domain, while I said earlier, almost half of the children are able to
06:54meet the threshold, but for adolescents, it drops to about one third, right? And the reason being is
07:01that under the sexual reproductive health component, they're lacking behind, right? They're not getting
07:08the access to knowledge. They don't have this, the adult to talk to about sexual reproductive health.
07:15And they feel uncomfortable talking about it in their community or at school. So that's one of the reasons
07:23why you see a decline in well-being as you become. Which is what was really interesting about the study,
07:30because I think the study really took the time to ask children themselves directly about their own
07:37experiences. How important is it that studies like the UNICEF study listens and hears children's voices
07:44rather than relying on the adults' perspectives around them? Yes, you rightly pointed out that we actually did
07:52the survey on the ground with children directly or their caregivers depending on the particular age.
07:57But I want to bring it back to even before we went to the ground, right? Even before designing the
08:02domain
08:03and the survey tools and the index, we actually started out with the participatory engagements with
08:08children in Sabah. So we gathered different children in different regions of Sabah through our CSO partners,
08:14and we asked them, what is well-being to you? And they shared it through their drawings, their storytelling,
08:22and conversations with us. And I actually learned a lot more about my topic of my field of understanding
08:31through their lens versus other stakeholders actually. So that process of having an engagement with children
08:41when designing programs or policies or study or research about children with children themselves
08:47first is actually very, very key. I'm sure it must have been quite rewarding. So you put in all this
08:53work
08:54into the research, into coming up with this index, and it's a very nuanced assessment. But how would you
09:01like policymakers to actually use this data? And coming back to what you said about how different
09:08the different deprivations are interlinked, and many Sabahan children have more than one deprivation. In
09:14fact, almost three deprivations at every one time. So how would you like policymakers to act upon the data
09:22that you've been presenting today? All right. Thanks, Melissa, for this question. And ahead of the
09:28Belanjawan and National Budget discussions, I must say, so I appreciate it. So to answer your question,
09:34I think the first step is, one, to be informed and to advocate for greater investments for children
09:40ahead of the budget discussions, especially when we are now able to break down the data on well-being of
09:48children to its most granular level, right, too. So to give you an example, when we look at vaccination
09:54coverage across the state, previously we can only look at Sabah alone, but now we're able to break it down
10:00to division level, right? So that would allow us to target resources better. And over time, right,
10:07all these different well-being indicators also act as a baseline to see whether our investment in children
10:12is making a great impact to their lives, right? And we're hoping to see that as we make greater
10:20iterations of the Sabah Chow well-being next. Sorry, if I just may jump in, can I ask you specifically
10:26about the undocumented and stateless children? Because the great thing about this study was
10:32that it included these vulnerable populations which are often missed out of national surveys.
10:37So would you like to, what would you like policy makers to prioritise, to act upon, now that you've
10:45seen how the undocumented or stateless children have had lowest outcomes across almost every domain?
10:50So I think the first step is inclusion, right? As you rightly pointed out, they're excluded even at
10:57the national statistics, even in national surveys. Mind you, I understand that the national surveys and
11:02census are built upon a specific framework, so they are excluded by design. So one step, the first step is
11:09to always think about the hard-to-reach population, a marginalised population, like children with disabilities,
11:15undocumented or stateless children. The second bit is when you look at the domains for undocumented children,
11:22you notice while there are a lot of deprivations, there's actually one strong positive thing,
11:27which is community support and family support. And it's actually relatively high. So one thing is to be
11:35able to think about how we can leverage on community and family supports in order to be able to extend
11:41these different services, social services, basic services through them, right? Of course,
11:51UNICEF advocates for, for example, education for all, healthcare access for all, but we understand
11:57that there's marginal improvements in order for us to make this happen. And I feel that if we could
12:02leverage on their strengths, which is that community support and family support, we could actually make
12:08it happen. Wonderful. Fakani, thank you so much for joining me on the show today and sharing some of
12:13the findings from your research. Fakani Mamanor from UNICEF Malaysia. We're going to take a quick break
12:18and we will speak more on this topic in just a few minutes. Stay tuned to consider this.
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