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Summary: UNITED NATIONS, May 8 — "We are
street children. We are the children
of war. We are the victims and
orphans of H.I.V./AIDS."
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 — "We are street children. We are the
children of war. We are the victims and orphans of H.I.V./AIDS."
So declared the small but unshakeable voice of Gabriela Azurdy
Arrieta, a 13-year-old from Bolivia this morning at the opening
session of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session
on Children.
It was the first time children were allowed to speak in such
august chambers. So Gabriela, along with Audrey Cheynut, 17,
from Monaco, both reciting a message drafted by a 300-member
children's delegation to the meeting, did not squander the
opportunity.
"We want a world fit for children," Gabriela said, her head barely
peeking up from behind the lectern, "because a world fit for us is
a world fit for everyone."
The three-day meeting, the first General Assembly session to be
devoted to the world's youngest citizens, is intended to assess
the plight of the world's children over the last 12 years, when the
United Nations first set concrete goals to improve children's lives.
The record spoke for itself: Some gains had been made in health
and education, but 10 million children still die every year from
preventable diseases and 120 million are not in school. Such a
record prompted the secretary general, Kofi Annan, to reproach
his peers.
"To the adults in this room, I would say: Let us not make children
pay for our failures any more," he said in the opening remarks
this morning to heads of state and children from more than 180
countries. "We the grown-ups must reverse this list of failures."
The conference is to produce a new list of goals for 2015 on
everything from protecting children from war to caring for those
orphaned by AIDS to offering children simple life-saving tools like
measles shots. It drew 60 heads of state, 3,000 members of non-
governmental organizations and hundreds of children.
But if the halls of the United Nations were awash with pledges
about uplifting children, they were also riven with significant
debates over their rights and desires.
Members of the United States delegation, noting their
disappointment with the draft conference document, said today
they would ask for abstinence to be included as part of the
sexual education portion of the document.
"As President Bush has said, abstinence is the only sure way of
avoiding sexually transmitted disease, premature pregnancy and
the social and personal difficulties attendant to nonmarital sexual
activity," Tommy G. Thompson, the Bush Administration's
Secretary of Health and Human Services and the head of the
United States delegation, told the General Assembly.
"Our efforts include strengthening close parent-child
relationships, encouraging the delay of sexual activity, and
supporting abstinence education programs."
At a briefing with reporters later in the day, members of the
United States delegation said they were also concerned that,
among other things, the conference document did not include
sufficiently strong language on protecting children under 18 from
prostitution and pornography.
Disappointment aside, members of the American delegation said,
this conference is nothing like the Conference on Racism in
Durban, where the United States walked out. They said they
were optimistic about reaching a consensus.
Conference documents, particularly on children's issues, are
usually reached by consensus, rather than by a vote. The United
States, like any other member nation, has the option of spelling
out its reservations on specific provisions but accepting the
conference document as a whole.
The American delegation has also urged that references to the
phrase "reproductive health services" clearly exclude abortion. An
American official contended that delegates from other countries
had agreed privately that the phrase did not refer to abortion,
but that they had not yet agreed to spell it out.
The question of how to handle abortion is a constant thorn on
the side of United Nations conferences. Because "reproductive
health services" can mean different things in different countries —
in some countries, abortion is part of the menu of options; in
other countries it is illegal — previous United Nations conferences
sidestepped the dispute by leaving it to individual nations.
Many other countries, including most of Europe, want to leave it
that way. "It should be up to countries if and to what extent
abortion should feature as an element within the constellation of
reproductive health services," said a member of a delegation from
a European country; he did not want to be named for fear of
jeopardizing the negotiations.
The other sticking point for the American delegation is the degree
to which the conference document can refer to a landmark 1989
treaty on children's rights. Along with Somalia, the United States
is the only country that has not ratified the so-called Convention
on the Rights of the Child. The treaty prohibits countries from
using the death penalty against criminals under age 18, a
practice permitted in many American states.
The treaty spells out a host of political, economic and cultural
rights of children, and many children's advocates here said they
hoped it would be the standard on which this conference
document would be based.
Association: The New York Times