Young contest winners meet Secretary-General Annan

NEW YORK, 7 May 2002 - The 23 children and young people from around the world who won Nickelodeon and MTV competitions to attend the United Nations Special Session on Children are no strangers to public attention. Selected from thousands of applicants, they are some of the most accomplished children and adolescents in their countries.

Nonetheless, they were visibly nervous as they sat waiting in the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium on Tuesday for their chance to meet UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his wife, Nane Annan.

Biju Baburaj, a 13-year-old from India, was fidgeting in his seat. Indeed, when he was asked what excited him most about the Special Session, his answer was unequivocal: "Meeting the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan."

Twelve of the children at the meeting with the Secretary-General were selected to come to New York for the Special Session through a Nickelodeon campaign supporting UNICEF's 'Say Yes for Children' campaign. Ranging in age from 6 to 13, they represented Australia, Brazil, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Japan, Malaysia, the Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Zambia.

The other 11 young people who met with the Secretary-General came to the Special Session after winning a competition called 'Speak Your Mind Asia', a campaign jointly sponsored by MTV, Levi Strauss & Co. and UNICEF that encourages children to uphold their rights. In the competition, which drew more than 22,000 applicants, teenagers were asked how they would make the world a better place for children. The 11 winners, ranging in ages from 15 to 24, represented countries throughout Asia, including China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

The Secretary-General and his wife sat with the two groups in separate sessions for a half-hour each. When the Nickelodeon children's group asked him if he thought the world would be a better place for children in the future, Mr. Annan responded, "If the world is not a better place for kids in the future, then the grown-ups will have failed you." He added that it was adults' responsibility to ensure that measures are undertaken to improve the lives of children, but he also encouraged the children to take responsibility for doing it themselves. "You don't need to wait until you grow up to take action," Mr. Annan said.

The young people from the 'Speak Your Mind Asia' group told Mr. Annan of the various efforts they were making to improve the world for children - by protecting them from sexual abuse, making sure that they did not live in poverty, giving them access to books instead of guns, and ensuring that they lived in a clean environment.

Then the young people presented the Secretary-General with a denim jacket embroidered with the 'Speak Your Mind' logo on the back. "Are you giving these to everyone?" Mr. Annan asked. "No," they replied. "We had it made especially for you."