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[NEW YORK, 10 December 2007] – Five years after world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly for the Special Session on Children, UNICEF today launches Progress for Children: A World Fit for Children Statistical Review.
The report is the most comprehensive statistical assessment to date of advances made towards creating A World Fit for Children – the vision of the outcome document from the historic 2002 Special Session. Among its findings, Progress for Children shows dramatic advances in reducing the mortality rate for children under the age of five, which dropped below 10 million in 2006 for the first time on record. The report highlights a wide range of proven interventions for child survival. For example: Concerns about health and HIV and AIDS Structured around the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, currently the focus of international aid efforts, Progress for Children: A World Fit for Children Statistical Review targets four strategic areas: promoting healthy lives; providing a quality education; protecting children against abuse, exploitation and violence; and combating HIV and AIDS. Beyond the encouraging news on child survival, Progress for Children finds fewer advances towards the goal of expanding treatment coverage for major childhood diseases such as pneumonia and malaria. More work is also needed to combat HIV and AIDS, as the number of people living with HIV continues to rise globally. In particular, only 11 per cent of pregnant women living with HIV in low and middle-income countries receive treatment to reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to their infants. Education progress and challenges One of the most heartening findings of the Progress for Children report is that many countries are close to providing universal primary education, meaning that the number of primary-school-age children out of school has declined markedly in recent years. In more than 60 developing countries, primary school enrolment reaches or exceeds 90 per cent. But enrolment rates, however high, do not guarantee satisfactory attendance rates. In eastern and southern Africa, for example, attendance rates are believed to be as much as 13 per cent lower than enrolment. Data on secondary school attendance is also a concern. Only 60 per cent of the world’s children of the appropriate age attend secondary school. Improved data collection UNICEF has supported enhanced data collection, another priority identified during the Special Session, to compile Progress for Children. The improvement in data is a critical factor in the story behind the report. UNICEF has worked for the past decade to improve the technical rigour of the surveys that Progress for Children draws upon. Since 1995, nearly 200 Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) initiated by UNICEF have been carried out in 100 countries and territories, and MICS were implemented in more than 50 countries in 2005-06. Together with the data provided by USAID-supported Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), these surveys constitute the largest single source of MDG information to date. Baselines on child protection Before the mid-1990s, critical gaps in data hindered accurate analysis in many key areas – particularly areas such as child protection from abuse, exploitation and violence, which are now covered in MICS and DHS. “For the first time we have baselines on a range of child protection issues from child marriage to child labour to child discipline,” said Karin Landgren, UNICEF’s Chief of Child Protection. Progress for Children: A World Fit for Children Statistical Review will be the basis of expert discussions to be held this week at UNICEF House and the United Nations, as youth advocates and government leaders gather from around the world for four days of events, panels and forums surrounding two days of General Assembly plenary sessions. Further information