LatAm development bank, UNICEF target $5 billion for child-friendly projects

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By Katy Daigle and Simon Jessop

NEW YORK (Reuters) -The development bank for Latin America and the Caribbean will channel $5 billion in the next five years toward projects that help children, part of a wider U.N. campaign to ensure that financial investments do not harm the world’s youth.

The commitment marks the most ambitious child-focused finance plan launched by a multilateral lender to date and comes as countries slash development aid globally.

The bank will use UNICEF’s Child-Lens Investing Framework, launched last year, to gauge whether potential investment projects within the region meet standards for ensuring childhood safety and well-being.

Kitty van der Heijden, Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director, Partnerships at the United Nations Children’s Fund, said it was long overdue for financial institutions to be looking at how their decisions impact younger generations.

With the world’s 2.2 billion children representing about 30% of its population – and 50% of its poor – the development bank’s investments would now be changing children’s lives, she said.

“This is an investible proposition,” van der Heijden said in an interview with Reuters ahead of the announcement on Thursday during Climate Week in New York City. She noted research that shows $1 spent on a child today can yield up to $10 in societal benefits, and $1 spent on education is increased 20-fold over time toward GDP.

“If those were the returns from an investment portfolio, we would be drooling,” van der Heijden said.

All 17 of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals – which include eradicating poverty, ending hunger and providing access to clean water and education – involve some sort of impact on children. UNICEF estimates that about 60% of the child-focused targets are off-track.

In order to achieve the world’s goals for children by the target date of 2030, “we’re going to have to reset the button for how the financial system operates,” van der Heijden said.

The bank and UNICEF hope the initiative – dubbed LAC Future Bank – will bring in capital from governments, businesses and philanthropists. It will aim to help some 50 million youths in the region over the next five years, or nearly half the 115 million estimated to be in acute need, according to the Latin American and Caribbean development bank, known by the acronym CAF.

“As a regional development bank, we recognize that investing in children and youth is not only a moral obligation but also the most cost-effective investment we can make for the sustainable development of our region,” CAF’s Executive President Sergio Díaz-Granados said in a statement.

(Reporting by Katy Daigle in New York City and Simon Jessop in London; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)