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Poverty reduction starts with children

Tuesday, 29 February 2000: In a keynote address at the World Bank's annual Conference on Human Development today, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said the rights of children should be the focal point of a global movement to reverse poverty in the developing world.

"Childhood poverty is a disabling condition that often leaves permanent scars," the head of UNICEF stated. "For young children and adolescents, girls in particular, poverty means restricted access to healthcare, adequate food or basic education. It often means violence, abuse and exploitation without recourse to protection or justice."

Ms. Bellamy called for a global commitment to achieving results for poor children in three key areas in the next decade: quality care for infants and young children; universal access to good quality basic education; and opportunities for adolescents to become positive and productive adult citizens.

Failure to address early childhood development, education and the needs of adolescents has hobbled antipoverty efforts in the past, Ms. Bellamy argued, while attention to these fundamentals has resulted in measurable poverty reduction. She said a 1997 UNICEF-
World Bank agreement on 15 principles of cost sharing for education and health -- the Addis Ababa Principles -- represented a move in the right direction.

"Support of hands-on health, education and enablement programmes which involve local communities and reflect government commitment to child rights priorities are important keys to reducing deep poverty," the UNICEF chief said.

"A child in a village or a city cannot escape poverty unless she or he can depend on immunization against killer diseases and unless there are schools with qualified teachers to open up the doors of literacy and numeracy. As the child grows, escape from poverty becomes the freedom to play without a misstep that results in a crippling or lethal landmine explosion. And when the child attains adolescence, it means not being abducted and forced into military service or turned into a commodity for sex tourism.

"If we give primacy to universal child rights, we must address all conditions and situations that compromise these rights. This means acting to prevent the armed conflicts that maim and murder and enslave children today. It means allocating more resources to reverse the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the developing world. It means recognising that child rights means not having to live under such shadows."

Ms. Bellamy said that the most potent weapon in combating poverty will be a strong Global Movement for Children in the 21st Century. She said encouraging signs of such a movement already exist.

"We now have a massive new immunization effort -- the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). We are also working with WHO, Rotary International, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other partners to finally eradicate polio. And we are working with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Cisco Systems in Netaid, which will use the power of the internet to help eliminate poverty."

A key future milestone, Bellamy said, will be a Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, now scheduled for September, 2001. The session will focus on children, reviewing the implementation of the programme of action approved by the 1990 World Summit for Children and identifying what needs to be done to accelerate future progress for children.

Earlier today, Ms. Bellamy participated in a UNICEF Voices of Youth internet forum on poverty and social equity with Human Development Network Vice President Eduardo Doryan. UNICEF participation at the World Bank meeting included involvement in special sessions on literacy, child-friendly schools and supporting an exhibit on the Global Movement for Children.

Human Development Week is an annual event organized by the World Bank to exchange information on human development issues. This is the second year in which UNICEF has been a participant.

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