Voices of UN and UN entities

"Children are our future and if we use them in battle we are destroying the future. We must reclaim them, every one of them, one at a time."

"You have a right to live a live a safe life from the threat of war, abuse and exploitation. These rights are obvious. Yet we, the grown-ups have failed you deplorably in upholding many of them."

"…a child born in the year 2000 has a right to expect to see a very different world by the time he or she is 15 years old. It means all of you have a right to see a better world in your lifetime. That better world can be built only by investing in you, the children of the world."

"Let us not make children pay for our failures anymore."

- Kofi A. Annan
United-Nations Secretary-General

"It is crucially important to recognize that chronic poverty remains the biggest obstacle to promoting the welfare of children in many developing countries. The international development goals and strategies agreed upon at major United Nations conferences, in particular the Millennium Summit, should be continuously pursued by the international community in order to assist developing countries in eradicating poverty and promoting the well-being of children."

- Han Seung-soo
President of the UN General Assembly

"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."

- Patricia Durrant,
Chairperson of the Preparatory Committee for the Special Session.

"We now must scale up our actions. We must work harder to reach and empower poor people and their children - especially their newborn babies and those who are in their teens. Only then can we truly say that we are preparing our world for the generations of the future. Only then will we be seen to confront inequity and promote social justice. Only then will we create the foundation for lasting peace."

"A child is born and begins her journey through life. Her parents live on less than US $2 per day. Like other children in the poor half of our world, there is a one in five risk that she will have died before she is five.

"She, and millions of others like her, have no choice. They march into life like soldiers into killing fields.

"Almost 11 million dead each year. Many more than the numbers who have died from wars during the past decade.

"We must break the silence. We must confront the complacency. Deaths of poor children are not "inevitable". They should not be happening. They are a blot on our conscience."

- Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland,
Director-General World Health Organization

"This Special Session must yield concrete action towards the full implementation of the rights already recognized by the international community. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is nearly universally ratified. Our task now is to bring these standards home - home to every school, hospital, law court, work place, and family in the world."

- Mary Robinson,
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

"The biggest scandal I would say if not crime is that we deny young people the information, the right to know, and the support that would make them grow up in a world that is much safer for themselves. Young people must be at the center of the response to AIDS, because that's what's going to make for stopping this epidemic."

"HIV is terrible, but we cannot let it claim victory. For the sake of children, we will not."

- Dr. Peter Piot,
Executive Director, UNAIDS