Press
Centre
Press release issued by the UN
Department of Public Information
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,
UNICEF 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
View and order the Special Session video b-roll at http://www.unicef.org/broadcast/brolls/specialsession/
A live satellite news feed will be available twice daily
during the Special Session.
Learn more at:
http://www.unicef.org/broadcast/feeds/
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