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Summary: GENEVA / NEW YORK, 26 April 2002 -
Member States of the United Nations
are expected to adopt a wide-
ranging series of goals at a global
conference next month in New York
that will place children back at the
top of the world's agenda and
address the pressing issues of child
mortality, AIDS, exploitation and
poverty. United Nations Member States Poised to Endorse Wide-Ranging
Goals for Children
Global Effort to Reduce Mortality, AIDS, Exploitation, and Poverty
Among Children
GENEVA / NEW YORK, 26 April 2002 - Member States of the United
Nations are expected to adopt a wide-ranging series of goals at
a global conference next month in New York that will place
children back at the top of the world's agenda and address the
pressing issues of child mortality, AIDS, exploitation and poverty.
The 21 proposed goals promise to have far-reaching impact on
the well-being of the world's young people. They form the basis
of the 8-10 May UN General Assembly Special Session on Children
and are contained in the conference's draft outcome document, A
World Fit for Children, which United Nations Member States are
currently finalizing as part of a yearlong consultative process
(available at www.unicef.org/
specialsession/documentation/index.html).
"The unanimity among UN States toward the goals is very
positive. It shows we can speak with one voice when it comes to
our children," said Patricia Durrant, the Jamaican Permanent
Representative to the United Nations who is chairing the Special
Session's preparatory process. "We have learned from previous
meetings that setting goals is a crucial step. With goals, we have
something to strive for. Without them, we have no way of
measuring our successes and failures."
At the Special Session on Children - rescheduled from last
September due to the attacks - governments will review what
has been achieved for children over the last decade and, crucially,
what has not. The meeting is set to conclude with official
agreement on the draft outcome document and its 21 goals,
which will make a vital contribution to the achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals adopted by world leaders two
years ago.
Many of the 2002 goals for children have been drawn from recent
UN declarations aimed at pulling hundreds of millions out of
poverty within a generation. Gathering the goals into a single
document enables governments to focus on children as the
cornerstone of a stable, thriving society. "Healthy and educated
children do not merely result from economic development," said
Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF. "They are a critical
force driving it. If we are to invest in development, that means,
first and foremost, we must invest in children. A single set of
global goals on children gets the world moving in that direction."
New Challenges Emerge, Key Issues Remain
The goals build on targets set at the 1990 World Summit for
Children. That meeting produced a declaration and plan of action
that are among the most rigorously monitored and implemented
international commitments of the last decade. Annual national
and periodic international reviews of the 1990 goals have
produced the most extensive set of data ever compiled on the
status of children. The information is contained in the recently
updated We the Children: Meeting the Promises of the World
Summit for Children (available at www.unicef.org/specialsession).
Key issues from 1990 remain central to the new global goals,
including further reducing infant and maternal morality, expanding
access to clean water and sanitation, and establishing universal
primary education. But new targets have been added in the
areas of HIV/AIDS and child protection, reflecting the changing
nature of the challenges facing the world's children.
Five goals deal with the protection of children from abuse,
neglect, exploitation and violence. Because of their often hidden
and undocumented nature, these issues do not lend themselves
to delineated targets. Rather, each government has agreed to
investigate these abuses, to set standards for monitoring them,
and to protect children from them with appropriate legislation.
Three of the goals address HIV/AIDS, whose devastating impact
was largely unforeseen in 1990. Today children are both the
pandemic's primary victims and the key to breaking transmission.
"The newer goals on child protection and HIV/AIDS are very
important. By signing on to these goals, governments are helping
break the silence on very troublesome issues that many societies
might otherwise not address," Bellamy said. "Governments are
recognising that the vulnerability of their children directly impacts
the vulnerability of their countries."
The Goals of 1990: Mixed Results to Learn From
Today's goals are rooted in the knowledge gained since the 1990
World Summit for Children, where the world's nations agreed to
27 goals to be met by 2000. The results are decidedly mixed, with
substantial progress in some areas matched with stagnation and
even outright deterioration in other areas. Overall, of the 27
goals set in 1990, six had considerable success, twelve had some
progress and three had no progress at all. For the remaining six,
there is limited or inconclusive data (full results are available at
www.unicef.org/specialsession).
One area of notable improvement is child health. Over the last
decade, low-cost, high-impact programmes have helped drop
global under-five mortality rates by more than 10 per cent, with
63 countries achieving the summit goal of one-third reduction.
Deaths from diarrhoea, for example, have been reduced in half
thanks to the rapid expansion of oral rehydration therapy.
Another success is neonatal tetanus, with the summit goal of
elimination reached by 104 of 161 countries.
But the overall picture shows how much work remains unfinished.
Nearly 11 million children still die each year, often from readily
preventable causes. An estimated 150 million children are
malnourished. Over 120 million are still out of school. Tens of
millions work, often in abusive conditions. Millions more are
exposed to conflict and other forms of violence.
***
For further information, please contact:
Liza Barrie, UNICEF Media Chief, New York (212) 326-7593
Patsy Robertson, Special Session Media, New York (212) 326-7270
Laufey Love, UN Department of Public Information, New York
(212) 963-3507
Alfred Ironside, UNICEF Media, New York (212) 326-7261
Mitchie Topper, UNICEF Media, New York (212) 303-7910