Millions of children left behind as Eastern Europe develops

Despite recent economic growth, two-thirds of Albania's children still live in poverty.

from the July 10, 2007 edition

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Leonardo Menchini, a researcher for UNICEF's Innocenti Research Center in Florence, Italy, says no one is certain why so many children in Albania are malnourished and that more research needs to be done since the statistics are based only on a handful of studies. Still, he says, "The data for Albania are quite shocking."

Ms. Ymeraj says that it is difficult to compare the situation of children today with that during communist times, but that life has deteriorated for the poorest in a number of concrete ways.

The state no longer guarantees jobs, houses, or healthcare, as it did before. In rural areas, industry and state-farm collectives have collapsed, leaving people to fend for themselves, and many government services are no longer available. In rural areas, for example, 85 percent of secondary schools have shut their doors.

Researchers say that poverty is becoming increasingly entrenched, particularly in rural areas, among Albania's minority Roma population and in families with children. Indeed, across the region, countries with the lowest birthrates also have the lowest poverty levels.

"What has emerged is the concentration of disadvantage. Families with children seem more disadvantaged than before, relatively speaking," says Menchini, emphasizing that the state must do more to protect children. "It's important for these counties to invest in social services. They have to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty."

Jalldyz Ymeri, a young grandmother who lives near the Daljani family, says in communist days she would not have nearly lost her 3-year-old grandson Orgito – a spiky-haired boy with angelic eyes – whom races around the family's dirt yard as she watches. A few months earlier, the boy fell seriously ill, and Ymeri had to bribe a doctor to see him.

"The medicines to cure him are very expensive," she says. "Sometimes we have to choose between food or medicine. Nobody will treat us if we don't pay."

"For us it was much better in communist times," insists Ymeri's husband, Safet. "We were obliged to go to school. The government gave us housing. We like democracy, but this is not real democracy."

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