Press Centre 2003/06/16: Children’s Rights

Statement by Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, on the launch of the Leave No Child Out campaign

İstanbul, Turkey, 16 June 2003 -- Madame Minister, Ambassador Kretschemer, President Nemsadze of the Regional Network for Children, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Last year, at the General Assembly’s Special Session on Children (UNSSC), world leaders reaffirmed their commitment to child rights by vowing to create A World Fit for Children. Their Programme of Action evoked a vision of a global environment where all girls and boys, without exception, are free to have a childhood -- where they can play and learn, where they are loved, respected and cherished, where their safety and well-being are paramount -- and where they can grow to adulthood in health, peace and dignity.

The Regional Network for Children, whose inspired advocacy helped build a popular mandate for the Say Yes for Children campaign during preparations for the Special Session on Children (UNSSC), is now leading a new effort designed to accelerate progress toward the creation of that world -- a world where no child is discriminated against or excluded.

It is called the campaign to Leave No Child Out -- and today, I have the singular honour of joining with distinguished representatives of the RNC, the Government of Turkey and the European Union (EU) to launch it here in İstanbul.

My Friends, we are in a region of the world where 26 million people pledged their support to the Say Yes for Children campaign -- and a majority chose as their top priority the need to eliminate all forms of exclusion and discrimination against children.

Those 26 million pledges -- received from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States and Baltics (CEE/CIS) -- represent about a quarter of the pledges that UNICEF received worldwide.

And Turkey provided 16 million of them -- which means that one out of every four citizens of this nation cast a vote.

This remarkable outpouring was no random event. Governments in the region did their part to create an atmosphere conducive to voting. And the Report marking the one-year anniversary of the Special Session (UNSSC) noted that governments have been doing an effective job in establishing platforms for actions.

But the lessons of the great cycle of United Nations Summits and Conferences of the 1990s show that the active involvement of civic society is often needed to ensure that words are translated into effective action -- and in this pursuit, the RNC has proved itself to be not only an effective advocate for the Global Movement for Children (GMFC), but a potentially powerful actor in the push to lay the groundwork for A World Fit for Children.

Like the Say Yes for Children campaign, Leave No Child Out is about hope rather than despair. It is an opportunity for citizens everywhere to stand up and be counted -- to remind the world that not only citizens have obligations to create a protective environment to help promote the well being of the most marginalised and excluded children. Governments, corporations and civil society organisations of all kinds have similar obligations as well -- and those obligations must be met.

Exclusion creates a vicious cycle of disadvantage, with the damage passed from one generation to the next in a dead-end legacy of poverty, ill health, and illiteracy. And by adding new burdens to overstretched public services, it undermines economic stability -- and ultimately democracy itself.

For millions of children, exclusion is not a passing slight -- it is a permanent state, the result of some form of discrimination.

Who are the excluded? A malnourished infant, a subjugated girl child, a child soldier -- all are excluded not only from their right to achieve well-being and fulfilment, but also from their right to become responsible and productive citizens.

In this region of the world, they are the Roma or other minority children whose language is not used in the local school and whose chance of receiving an education and reaching his or her full potential is practically zero.

They are the nearly 18 million who live in abject poverty, in households surviving on less than $2.15 per person, per day.

They are the children from poor families, from ethnic minorities, disabled children, the internally displaced and children living in rural areas who suffer disproportionately when health and education budgets are cut.

They are the 10% or more of all children in the region who are disabled, many suffering from physical or mental disabilities that are often the result of preventable malnutrition or disease.

In a culture where residential care for children is still considered a form of child protection, they are the 1.5 million children now in public care -- an increase of 150,000 since 1989 -- of whom some 1 million live in institutions for orphans and the disabled.

They are rural children unreached by immunisation or other life-saving services; they are the children ostracised because of the stigma attached to the fact that they and their families are living with HIV/AIDS. They are the children raised in an institution because of family crisis or a disability; the girls whose vulnerability to violence and exploitation is magnified by poverty; the children growing up in camps for refugees or internally displaced people, traumatised by upheaval and conflict; the teenagers left out of decision-making, voiceless and choiceless on the threshold of adulthood and citizenship.

Across this region, we see the same barriers appearing again and again to shut children out of progress: poverty, ethnicity, disability, institutionalisation, the impact of conflict, gender discrimination and the stigma of HIV/AIDS -- the main themes of your very timely and much-needed campaign. Very often, these factors work in combination to create layer upon layer of exclusion.

Poverty often goes hand in hand with minority status. A recent survey of Roma populations in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, showed that only one in three had completed primary school; that nearly 50% were unemployed; and that close to one person in six was described as constantly starving.

One-third of the countries in this region have experienced armed conflict since 1989, violence stoked in large measure by ethnic hatred and intolerance. By 2000, 2.2 million people were internally displaced and almost 1 million were refugees -- most of them women and children.

And now the region faces the fastest growing rates of HIV infection in the world, in large part because the threat of shame and discrimination drive young people away from the information and services they so urgently need to protect themselves.

My Friends, this relentless pattern of discrimination and exclusion is intolerable -- all the more so because it is preventable. Indeed, this region already possesses much of the resources and knowledge necessary to end these outrages once and for all.

This is one of the most literate and well-educated regions on earth -- and that means you have a huge advantage in mobilising people and resources in favour of children.

In child health, countries in the region are scaling up their efforts to reach every child with important vaccines. And here in Turkey, a vast, two-year measles immunisation campaign targeting 20 million children is under way.

In nearly every country of the region, prospects are brightening for the return of economic growth and the consolidation of democracy. You have millions of dynamic and enthusiastic young people who are eager to embrace change and contribute to their new nations.

And the region’s governments have made firm commitments to children, with each pledging to uphold the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and national leaders have made far-ranging, region-specific commitments to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Special Session’s (UNSSC) Twenty-first Century agenda for children.

An additional reflection of this commitment is the girls’ education campaign that is being launched by the Government of Turkey, the Children’s Rights Coalition and young people, together with UNICEF.

Ladies and Gentlemen, combating exclusion and discrimination is, first and foremost, the responsibility of Governments. It is they that set the policies, make and enforce the laws, establish and carry out social programmes. But we know from experience that a broad-based movement for child rights is essential to fulfilling the agenda of A World Fit for Children.

The Leave No Child Out campaign is an opportunity to engage municipalities; parliamentarians, civil, religious and traditional leaders; families, communities and community groups; local interest groups; professional associations; the mass media; United Nations agencies; the private sector; and children and young people themselves.

To ensure the rights of children on the margins of society, we will need a shift in emphasis from the consequences of exclusion to its root causes. We need to ask ourselves hard questions, such as: why is it that so many children are falling between the cracks? What is it about our societies, our economies, our social services and our family support systems that isn’t working? What has happened to the notion of the Social Contract, to our basic values, when such high levels of child poverty and exclusion are tolerated? Are we not creating the very resentment and rage upon which terrorism and conflict thrive?

Every society -- East and West, North and South -- must find its own answers to such questions-- and then take urgent action.

Over the coming year, I have every hope that the Leave No Child Out campaign will open a wide-ranging debate in your countries so that genuine solutions can be found. It is not only a matter of improving laws or changing policies, as crucial as such steps may be; discrimination and intolerance are also the result of deep-seated attitudes that are often resistant to change. Listening to the views of children and giving them a voice in the debate, in decision-making, in the campaign, will make a difference. Harnessing the power of the mass media to combat discrimination and portray positive role models will also be key. And while winning a place at the policy reform table for civil society and NGO networks is crucial, so, too, is speaking out in the community.

This means, above all, working through effective partnership. UNICEF is proud of our partnership with the RNC. And we are delighted to be working with the European Commission and NGO networks in a regional child rights training project growing out of the Leave No Child Out campaign.

The key to building a Global Movement for Children (GMFC) will be partnerships of the kind we are launching here today -- with civil society mobilising all its energy and commitment to build a shared sense of responsibility for the well-being of every child on earth, starting with those most in need of protection. For it is only through broad and committed partnerships that we will reach the remaining goals for child survival and development; achieve longstanding poverty alleviation targets; slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and armed conflict; and establish a comprehensive agenda for children for the first years of this new century.

On behalf of UNICEF, I wish you every success in your contribution to this noble effort.

Thank you.

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