Meeting Promises Made a Decade Ago

UN Photo/John Isaac

“We were all children once - and we are now the parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts of children". So states United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his landmark report, We the Children: Meeting the promises of the World Summit for Children.

The needs of children are not “tricky”; they are not “hard”; they are not “thorny problems” to be politicized or obstructed. Children need and should expect a decent start in life. And we adults, once also children and perhaps parents ourselves, should be expected to do all we can to ensure that children and the generations to come inherit a fairer, safer, healthier world - a world with a better future. Isn’t that what families throughout the ages have wished for and worked hard towards, with sweat and tears?

We the Children assesses the progress made in meeting the commitments of the 1990 World Summit for Children, which include best practices and lessons learned, obstacles to progress, and a plan of action for building a world that is fit for children to live in. The report is an adapted and abridged version of the Secretary-General’s report, We the Children: End-decade review of the follow-up to the World Summit for Children, released in May 2001, a few months prior to when the special session on children was originally scheduled to have been held. That fall session was scuttled by an unforgettable act of terrorism on 11 September. One of the consequences was that the basic need of children for help at the highest political level and at the highest level of the family was pos! tponed even further.

Some nine months later, leaders are again scheduled to meet in New York, from 8 to 10 May 2002, to begin working toward a better future for the youngest among us.

The special session of the General Assembly will bring together Government leaders and heads of State, non-governmental organizations, children’s advocates and young people at the United Nations. The gathering will represent a rare opportunity to change the way the world views and protects children.

First, the special session will assess what has been achieved since the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children and its Plan of Action were adopted in 1990, soon after the Convention on the Rights of the Child had come into force. This international instrument has since been ratified by every country but two, and places children at centre-stage in the quest for the universal application of human rights. Two Optional Protocols, on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, were adopted to strengthen the Convention’s provisions in those areas, and entered into force on 12 February and 18 January 2002, respectively.

Second, the session will be an opportunity to build a consensus among world leaders to move the agenda beyond issues of survival to those of development of the whole child. The cost to society of failing its children is huge. Social research has found that children’s earliest experiences, within the family and with other caregivers, significantly influence the future course of their development.

The Pluses and the Minuses The last decade of the twentieth century held out great promise for the future of the young. It saw a global economic boom, new freedoms and technological breakthroughs. But ills, deadly to the well-being of the youngest, persisted and even intensified: mass poverty, diseases, violence and increasing disparities in wealth and opportunity. Thus, each positive development was accompanied by a new or worsening problem: + Unprecedented global prosperity and unparalleled access to information. - Persistent poverty and widening disparities both between and within rich and poor countries. + Following the World Summit for Children, stronger international partnerships and successful action to cut major childhood diseases. - Unimaginable devastation by HIV/AIDS, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. + Some gains for women, including greater legal recognition of their rights in many countries. - Continuing gender inequity and gender discrimination. + Increasing recognition of and attention to violations of children’s rights. - Proliferating armed conflicts that disproportionately killed and injured children; the persistence of other forms of violence against children and continued widespread exploitation of their bodies and labour. + Some progress in reducing the burden of debt crippling poor countries, freeing some resources for investment in children. - Severe decline in international development assistance and inattention to basic services in both aid and public spending. + New opportunities for popular participation created by the spread of democratic governance and increased decentralization, and a greater role in development for civil society, NGOs and the private sector. - Continued poor environmental management, placing ever greater numbers of children at risk of disease and natural disasters.

The way in which children develop determines whether they will make a net contribution, or pose a huge cost to society over the course of their lives. The UN Charter, born more than half a century ago out of this conviction, pledges to “save succeeding generations” from war and to promote “social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”. And with each successive generation of children, we have seen the keeping, as well as the breaking, of that promise. On the one hand, each new generation of children has had a greater chance of surviving and thriving than the one before. On the other, the failure to reduce poverty at a time of unprecedented economic growth has left children as the most severely affected population group. According to the report, “despite increasing international concern about poverty, the number of people in developing countries struggling to survive on less than $1 a day - the international measure of absolute povert! y - rose during the 1990s by an average of about 10 million each year. Today, despite a $30-trillion global economy, some 40 per cent of children in developing countries - about 600 million - must attempt to survive on less than $1 a day. Even in the world’s richest countries, one in every six children lives below the national poverty line”. No one can credibly argue that our responsibilities to the world’s children have been fulfilled.

To carry forward the vision of the UN Charter, the largest group of world leaders ever convened until September 1990 said, “There can be no task nobler than giving every child a better future”. The 71 heads of State and Government and 88 other senior delegates promised to uphold the principle that children had the “first call” on all resources, and that they would always put children’s best interests first - in good times or bad, in peace or in war, in prosperity or economic distress.

Leaders also committed themselves, in the World Declaration and the Plan of Action, to more than 20 specific goals relating to children’s survival, health, nutrition, education and protection. Those goals represented the clearest and most practical expression of the Convention itself. This bold but viable agenda was to be achieved by the year 2000 through actions at both national and international levels.

The Children’s Summit, notable for its unambiguous focus on achievable goals, was historic also for specifying systematic follow-up procedures and rigorous monitoring of progress towards them. In 2000, a wide-ranging, end-of-decade review process culminated in the preparation of substantive national progress reports by nearly 150 countries - the largest ever single data-collection effort for monitoring children’s rights and well-being. The breadth and quality of the follow-up review have made it possible to objectively assess the decade’s achievements and setbacks, and to draw lessons for a future agenda for children.

The picture that emerges is mixed. Real and significant progress has been made in a number of areas, perhaps much more than is commonly recognized. It is important to remember that the world has seen more gains against poverty and more progress for children in the last 50 years than in the previous 500. But there have also been setbacks, slippage and, on some fronts, actual regression. Still, on balance, there has been net progress and the groundwork has been done for wrapping up the unfinished business of the Summit and tackling new challenges.

Links:
We the Children: End-decade review of the follow-up to the World Summit for Children (Links to a large PDF file)
Meeting the promises of the World Summit for Children