LONDON (AlertNet) - Delegates from U.N. member countries meet in New York on May 8 for a special session devoted to the well-being and protection of children to be enshrined in a series of goals covering child mortality, AIDS, exploitation and poverty.

The three-day special General Assembly session on Children, organised by UNICEF, the U.N. Children's Fund, was postponed from September last year because of the suicide-hijacking attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In preparation for more than two years, the session will be the first time that the General Assembly -- the supreme organ of the United Nations -- has held a meeting devoted solely to all aspects of children's lives.

During the session, children and young people will be part of official government delegations and have the opportunity to speak at key meetings -- including addressing the General Assembly, for the first time.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said of the meeting: "It wasn't so long ago that we were all children. I hope that for a brief moment we will all become children again, discuss with them as equals and find a solution together for their future."

The special session is intended as a follow-up to a landmark summit in 1990, which aimed at setting guidelines for governments, special interest groups and U.N. agencies.

Its two-fold aim is to review how well the action plan adopted at the 1990 summit has been implemented and to commit members to action on behalf of children over the next decade.

"I hope that for a brief moment we will all become children again" -- Kofi Annan

The 1990 meeting, held in the euphoria of the end of the Cold War, set goals to accelerate education, particularly for girls, health and living conditions for children in poor countries.

Few of the targets have been met, however, with hoped-for funds falling short. Since 1990, issues of protection of children have moved to the forefront -- children as soldiers, as prostitutes and as victims of HIV/AIDS.

The 21 goals drawn up for consideration by the delegates in 2002 build on targets set at the 1990 summit.

‘A WORLD FIT FOR CHILDREN’

They are contained in the conference's draft outcome document, "A World Fit for Children", which U.N. member states were in the process of finalising.

The document was delayed in part because of conservative positions taken by the United States, to the dismay of Europeans as well as mainly Catholic Latin American countries.

Washington opposed a treaty on children's rights and joined Islamic countries in proscribing adolescent sex education and making sure health care for children was not an entitlement.

The U.S. administration of President George W. Bush also sought to delete any hint of abortion counselling for teenage girls, in peacetime or in war zones.

Patricia Durrant, Jamaica's U.S. representative who is chairing the session's preparatory process, said: "We 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."

Many of the goals for children have been drawn from U.N. declarations aimed at lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty within a generation. Enshrining the goals in a single document was designed to enable governments to focus on children as the cornerstone of a stable, thriving society, according to UNICEF.

"Healthy and educated children do not merely result from economic development," said Carol Bellamy, the agency's executive director.

"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."

"If we are to invest in development, that means, first and foremost, we must invest in children" -- Carol Bellamy

Issues from 1990 remain central to the new goals, such as further reducing infant and maternal morality, expanding access to clean water and sanitation, and establishing universal primary education.

New targets have been added in the areas of HIV/AIDS and child protection, reflecting new challenges facing children.

Five goals deal with the protection of children from abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence. Because they are often hidden and undocumented, these do not lend themselves to delineated targets, according to UNICEF.

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 deal with HIV/AIDS, whose devastating effects on children were largely unforeseen in 1990. Today, children are both primary victims and the key to breaking transmission, UNICEF says.

"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 session will be attended by a large number of NGOs involved in children's rights, poverty mitigation and refugee care. What do they expect it to achieve?

Save the Children UK is sending a 56-strong delegation and more of its staff will be attending as members of government or other NGO delegations, bringing the total number of Save the Children representatives to more than 60.

Barbara Crowther, Save the Children's head of campaigns, told AlertNet: "A lot of our lobbying has been making sure that the outcomes of this summit are child rights focused as well as development and needs related."

TIGHTER PRACTICAL COMMITMENTS

She said Save the Children had been pressing for a tightening of the practical commitments made at the summit.

"That was something we were lobbying very hard on -- that there were concrete actions and concrete resources allocated to the implementation of the action plan, so that it wasn't just a vague wish-list."

The main messages it was promoting were:

• listening to children: involving them as full participants in the summit
• more spending on children: putting financial resources behind the promises, including aid spending, debt cancellation, prioritising health and education
• putting children first: making children, and analysis of policy impact on children, the top priority in such areas as poverty reduction strategies.

World Vision, which says children’s rights are "at the very heart of its advocacy programme", will also be sending a delegation to the New York session.

Randini Wanduragala, head of policy at World Vision UK, told AlertNet that, since the 1990 summit, the focus has been on the under-fives, the very young children, and on health, education, nutrition, and water and sanitation.

"Huge resources have gone into that and, of course, it’s very important, but we are forgetting the other children, the older children, the adolescents," she said. "Those are covered by issues of violence, sexual exploitation, child labour, armed conflict. We can’t forget that."

She said World Vision had three main expectations of the General Assembly session: clear measurable goals and a strong commitment of resources to achieving those goals, full implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child – drawn up in 1989 and ratified by every country except the United States and Somalia -- and national plans of action to be devised by each U.N. member state.

Besides the notable exceptions of improvement in children's health and a reduction in under-five mortality, UNICEF was pessimistic in its assessment of progress on the 1990 goals:

• Nearly 11 million children still die each year, often from readily preventable causes.
• An estimated 150 million children are malnourished.
• More than 120 million are still out of school.
• Tens of millions work, often in abusive conditions.
• Millions are exposed to conflict and violence.

LINKS:

UNICEF: www.unicef.org/specialsession/

Save the Children UK: www.savethechildren.org.uk/summitup/index.html

World Vision: www.wvi.org/home.shtml