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Press Release
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,
Special Session 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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