Within three years of the World Summit for Children, 105 industrialized and developing countries, covering a total of 88 per cent of the world's children, had prepared national programmes of action (NPAs) for meeting the World Summit goals. In many cases, governments had used the process to bring together different sectors of society -- governmental and non-governmental -- in a joint endeavour. In some countries, Brazil and India for example, the same process also took place at state and even municipal levels.

The Summit had certainly been a star-studded and spectacular event. But it has not been allowed to vanish into the past as a one-off occurrence. Instead, it was used as a launching pad for a wider process of planning and commitment for children. In the 1960s, UNICEF had found it difficult to gain serious attention for such an idea. In the 1990s, however, Heads of State have given it their imprimatur, and made a strong commitment to the defence of children and reaching goals on their behalf -- some world leaders even identifying these with their own personal political platforms.

Photo: The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of children to be protected against hazardous and exploitative labour, which is still the norm in many parts of the world. ©

Meanwhile, in a replay of the 1970s, the 1990s have become a decade in which the response of the UN system to the flagging development movement has been to embark on a series of global conferences. The UN Conference on Environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) was followed by conferences on nutrition (Rome, 1992); human rights (Vienna, 1993); population and development (Cairo, 1994); social development(Copenhagen, March 1995); and women (Beijing, September 1995). Still to come is the 'City Summit' (Istanbul, June 1996). During the preparatory stages for all these conferences and at the meetings themselves, UNICEF has done its best to keep children's concerns prominently in view, actively promoting the social agenda encapsulated in the Declaration of the World Summit for Children .

In addition, a set of mid-decade goals for children has been established, starting with regional meetings in Africa and South Asia. In September 1993, on the third Summit anniversary, the United Nations Secretary-General convened a round table in New York called Keeping the Promise to Children, which reiterated the commitment to the Summit goals and endorsed mid-decade targets. These include universal ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and progress towards universal primary education, as well as targets for the control of specific diseases and nutritional deficiencies. By mid-decade, the aim was to have eradicated, or reduced by a specified amount, neonatal tetanus, malnutrition, polio, vitamin A deficiency, guinea worm disease and iodine deficiency disorders, as well as diarrhoeal and vaccine-preventable diseases (Panel 15).

The funding strategy for attaining these goals has been described as 'the 20/20 initiative': a call for developing countries to direct at least 20 per cent of their budgets to basic needs, and for industrialized countries to earmark 20 per cent of their development assistance for the same purpose. The 20/20 initiative has also gathered international support. In 1995 at the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, UNDP, UNESCO, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), UNICEF and WHO all backed it as a means of generating sufficient additional resources (US$30 billion-US$40 billion per annum) to ensure that by the end of the century everyone would have access to basic social services. A number of national governments have endorsed these principles and committed themselves to move in the 20/20 direction.

The establishment of mid-decade goals has been, in part, a manoeuvre to sustain the energy of the post-Summit process. In 1996, countries are due to report formally at the UN on their progress towards the goals for the year 2000. In many instances, this will be a report of some triumph: WHO reported on World Health Day in April 1995 that 146 countries have had no cases of polio for at least a year. Most of Asia has already made significant progress towards the goals, and many countries in East and South-East Asia have already achieved most of them.

Figure 9: The under-5 mortality rate per 1,000 births has decreased in every region. In the Middle East and North Africa region, the rate is now only a quarter of what it was in 1960.
Figure 10: Under-5 deaths are declining everywhere except in sub-Saharan Africa, where a strong increase in births has meant a rise in total deaths.
Source for both figures: UNICEF

Many countries in Latin America have also made considerable advances, as have many in the Middle East, albeit more selectively. In sub-Saharan Africa, the prospects are not good, though even there, with increased surveillance and national immunization campaigns, several countries will show improvement in at least half the goals.

But even with a renewed sense of commitment, it must be admitted that it will be difficult for many countries to bring about the reductions in child mortality, disease rates and illiteracy to which they committed themselves in 1990. Some African countries are in such a state of turmoil and economic crisis that for their leaders the vision of the Summit goals has already sunk below the horizon. UNICEF will, therefore, for the rest of the decade continue to put much of its energies into helping countries reach their child-centred targets.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child has already proved to be an effective framework for international action. With 179 countries having ratified it as of end-September 1995, universal ratification is within sight -- and the focus is already shifting to implementation, encouraging all countries to live up to their most basic commitments to children. The Convention has evolved from a set of remote aspirational norms into a practical working instrument.

The Convention has established social and economic rights -- the right to survival, early development, education, health care and social welfare support. It has also covered civil and political rights. These include the right of the child to a name and nationality, to freedom of expression, to participation in decisions affecting his or her well-being, and to protection from discrimination on grounds of gender, race or minority status, as well as protection from sexual and other forms of exploitation.

The key underlying advance is the recognition of the child as a complete individual. The Convention establishes that the child has an identity distinct from those of parents or nurturers and that the community has a duty to protect that identity and to enable the child to express it in matters such as guardianship or custody. In these areas, the overarching consideration should be "the best interests of the child."

In the early 1980s, the group of rights that UNICEF was most anxious to promote -- and upon whose inclusion in the Convention it had insisted -- were child rights to survival and development. The Convention asserts on behalf of children that their basic rights to health and education should ultimately be guaranteed by the State. When UNICEF could see those rights converging with the campaign for child survival and development, it gave the Convention energetic support both in the final drafting stages and also after adoption by the General Assembly.

This happy twinning of the primary focus of UNICEF with the emergence of the Convention has given great power to the pursuit of children's issues in the 1990s. The goals remain at the heart of the agenda: they flow so organically from the Convention itself as to confer upon the Convention a special legitimacy. And because the goals operate within a specific time-frame, the Convention is blessed with an immediate applicability to the lives children lead.

UNICEF has actively pursued universal ratification, with the support of many NGOs. In the process, UNICEF has become strongly identified with the cause of child rights in ways that have important implications for its future work in both industrialized and developing countries. It has, for example, heightened its concern for children in especially difficult circumstances -- abandoned children, children caught up in the violence of war, street children, children subject to special forms of abuse and discrimination and child victims of hazardous labour and sexual exploitation. To develop strategies to combat this most crushing form of exploitation, UNICEF is co-sponsoring the first ever World Congress on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (Stockholm, August 1996) (Panel 12).

This new attention to children's needs from a rights perspective means that in industrialized countries, as well as in the developing world, UNICEF has become much more of an advocate for children -- injecting a new dimension into the work of its National Committees. UNICEF has also been supporting the work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body that monitors ratifying countries as they move towards full implementation of the Convention.

The post-Summit process and the Convention on the Rights of the Child are helping to maintain the momentum on behalf of children. Even so, in the 1990s the prospects for the fight against poverty generally appear mixed. As in the case of progress towards the year 2000 goals, success in the struggle to ameliorate the human condition varies greatly between and among both regions and countries. While it is gratifying to recognize the substantial progress made in China, India and many other parts of Asia (which, after all, collectively represent half the world's children), it would be a mistake to fail to acknowledge that poverty is actually deepening in other regions of the world.

Early in the decade, the euphoria surrounding the immediate end of the cold war soon wore off. A world freed from the rigidities of superpower stand-off was now faced with the implosion of the USSR and the growing ethnic and nationalist turmoil in former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. In Europe, war re-emerged after an absence of 50 years, and those countries engaged in the transition from central planning to a free market found it a painful experience. The cold war thaw had briefly suggested that there might be a 'peace dividend' as expenditure on weapons was switched to development. But this idea vanished almost as soon as it had surfaced, and certainly did not long survive the costly hostilities of the Persian Gulf war.

In Africa, the 1990s have seen the end of apartheid in South Africa, with potential benefits for peace in the entire subregion, and a new development dynamism. However, the optimism this has generated has been counter-balanced by deepening crises elsewhere. Already during the 1980s, the continent had suffered from a seemingly endless succession of emergencies -- mostly caused by, or associated with, drought. Africa's fortunes were further worsened by the continuing fall in commodity prices, which made it impossible for most countries to make much economic progress or shake off the heavy burden of debt. Worse was to follow in the form of political breakdown. In the 1990s, the collapse of frail political and administrative structures has pushed a number of countries -- Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Somalia -- towards the ultimate condition of post-colonial breakdown: the 'failed State'.

In these emergency arenas, the children's agenda has been dominated by the combination of war with ongoing economic and environmental disaster. This has dashed developmental prospects and redirected attention towards specific child rights issues, in particular: children and land-mines, children and soldiering, and children lost or forced to flee because of fighting. In addition to considering what services children need, UNICEF has also been involved in the struggle to create humanitarian spaces -- 'zones of peace' -- in which some minimum services at least can be delivered. To an organization born among the detritus of war, it sometimes seems as if the historical wheel has come full circle.