[child-rights] When it comes to children, world still at a crawl

UNICEF Press release

TWO YEARS AFTER NATIONS SET TIME-BOUND GOALS, MILLIONS OF GIRLS AND BOYS
CONTINUE TO SUFFER NEEDLESSLY

NEW YORK, 7 May 2004 - With governments lagging in fulfilling promises
made at the United Nations two years ago, millions of children continue to
die from preventable diseases and to be deprived of such basic rights as
education, safe drinking water, and protection from abuse, UNICEF said
today.

"We are crawling toward goals that we should be marching toward," said
UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "We must pick up the pace and
sustain it, or children will continue to suffer. For millions of the
world's children, the achievement of these goals is not a bureaucratic
matter, but a question of life and death."

At the United Nations Special Session on Children in May 2002, governments
agreed to time-bound goals intended to improve child health and survival,
provide quality education, reverse the impact of HIV/AIDS, and protect
children from abuse, exploitation and violence.

The obligations, listed in a document headlined "A World Fit For
Children,"  are fundamental stepping stones toward the UN's Millennium
Development Goals. The most immediate of those goals ­ making sure that as
many girls are in school as boys ­ is to be achieved by 2005. Girls
continue to make up the majority of children out of school.

Two years since the Special Session, almost 90 per cent of countries have
made progress in integrating the goals into national plans, Bellamy said.
She urged governments to now take the next step and turn these plans into
expanded programs for children.

Bellamy also said that a major obstacle to meeting the goals in the
poorest countries is inadequate spending on children ­ both on the part of
national governments and their donor partners.

Governments in poor countries could do more to focus their budgets on the
basic social services that help children to survive and grow. At the same
time, despite renewing international agreements to raise the proportion of
their GDP going to development assistance to 0.7 percent, the major
developed nations have failed to come even half way to that target.

"Without money, poor countries cannot put into place all the essential
measures that we know save lives and protect children's dignity," Bellamy
said. "Children are still dying at the rate of 30,000 boys and girls under
the age of five every single day."

Bellamy pointed to the other costs of not achieving the promised goals.

"Not meeting these goals means that millions of children ­ most of them
girls ­ continue to be deprived of a basic education," she said. "It means
that millions of children continue to face a threat to their survival. It
means that millions of children continue to be orphaned by AIDS, sexually
exploited and subjected to the worst forms of child labour. These failures
to invest in children undermine the prospects for both children and their
countries to grow out of poverty."

Some developing countries are, however, showing the way forward.

In the year after the Special Session, Kenya increased its numbers of
children in primary school by 1.3 million. Bangladesh has continued to
make progress in bringing down child death rates and fertility rates, as
its education of girls improves. Malaria-affected countries such as
Eritrea, Vietnam, Guinea and Mali are making strides in ensuring that
families have bed nets which reduce the deadly threat posed by mosquitoes.
And Cambodia, like Uganda and Brazil, has reduced the rate of HIV
infection ­ while Botswana and other countries are scaling up access to
treatments for AIDS.

"All nations need to join this effort to create a world fit for children,"
Bellamy said.

****

For further information, please contact:

Alfred Ironside, UNICEF Media, New York 212 326 7261
Erin Trowbridge, UNICEF Media, New York 212 326 7172,
Wivina Belmonte, UNICEF Media, Geneva 41 22 909 5712,


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