Children first

Last week, the world's most powerful gathered to attend a landmark UN special session on children. The resulting declaration purports to improve the well-being of the world's smallest, most vulnerable citizens, reports Dahlia Hammouda from New York
The more than 60 heads of state and government, together with some 1,700 activists who also converged on New York for the United Nations Special Session on Children, were as much relieved as disenchanted when they eventually managed to arrive at an agreement. It came after 30 hours of bitter, non-stop negotiations over contentious issues. There was much haggling over the content of an outcome document for the session, and major concessions were made by the various delegations.
Somewhat amazingly given the issue -- improving the lives of children -- the negotiations proved to be a nightmare. The difficulties have cast a long shadow over what was expected to be a celebratory occasion.
Still the conference, held from 8 to 10 May at UN headquarters in New York, was perhaps the most optimistic global event in the many months since the horror of 11 September. Close to 6,000 people attended what was effectively the most important international conference on children in more than a decade.
Representatives of 180 high-level national delegations and 800 NGOs from 119 countries were in attendance, along with 250 members of parliament from 79 countries and scores of journalists and activists. Participants also included business magnates, cultural figures, Nobel laureates and religious leaders.
But in many ways, the most important participants in this unprecedented event were the 350 children who came to the conference as official delegates from 132 countries. The largest ever number of children to actively participate in deliberations at a UN conference, they attended a mini-Special Session from 5 to 7 May -- the "UN Children's Forum" -- to discuss the issues that matter most to them. The children presented their views on the outcome document to the UN General Assembly as it opened on 8 May. This was a historic event, the first time young people have addressed the General Assembly on a substantive issue.
Addressing the opening ceremony of the children's forum, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: "Your presence here marks a new chapter in the history of the UN. So far, adults have called the shots, but now it's time to build the world with children. Your voices will be heard, I promise."
Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, who highlighted the plight of the Palestinian child in her address to the General Assembly on 8 May, headed the Egyptian delegation to the UN special session.
"The negative traumatic repercussions of the tragedy that has unfolded in the occupied Palestinian territories over the past weeks will not be confined to the children of Palestine alone; they will extend to include the children of the region and of the world without any distinction," she said. "What took place sows the seeds of fear and hatred in the hearts of innocent children on both sides. It deprives them of the spirit of tolerance. It creates an atmosphere of hopelessness and uncertainty and opens the door of violence and extremism. All this while the world's conscience is, for the most part, a mere bystander. And we all ask ourselves, have we lost our conscience? Or are there other standards being applied in today's world?"
From the assembly podium, Mrs Mubarak called upon the world to contribute to putting an end to the human rights violations in the Palestinian occupied territories and to strive for peaceful and just solutions to provide a safe life for children, regardless of their affiliations or nationalities. "Children are, in the final analysis, one and the same. They are innocent beings who view life with hope and must not bear the burden of the past, because they belong to the future."
Egypt has recently hosted two regional preparatory meetings -- one African and the other Arab -- for the special session. At the 37th session of assembly of heads of state and government of the Organisation of African Unity held in Lusaka, Zambia, Mrs Mubarak received a mandate to present the declaration on the African Common Position at the special session, and to ensure that it receives the attention it deserves.
"The African continent represents the world's greatest developmental challenge -- for despite the attainment of a significant number of achievements, the African child remains the most deprived. Today, I am conveying the voice of African children to the international community, calling upon it to renew its commitment to ensure a future that does not marginalise their existence," Mrs Mubarak said.
The session's review of the achievements in the implementation of the Declaration and Plan of Action adopted at the 1990 World Summit for Children showed that children in the rest of the world are not faring so well either. Some 10 million children died of preventable diseases in the 1990s, 150 million children worldwide are malnourished, 120 million are not in school and 300,000 children in various parts of the world are fighting in wars. Aid from rich nations to the poor lagged at a time of unprecedented global prosperity and in much of the developing world, the number of people who live on less than $1 a day has surged over the last decade.
On the other hand, a progress report issued by the office of the secretary-general, entitled "We, the children" offers evidence of considerable progress for the world's two billion children. More children are in school than ever before, polio has been all but eradicated and the number of children who die of diarrhea has been reduced by half. Infant mortality rates, too, have improved in much of the world.
The report did, however, mention that, squeezed by foreign debt, many governments have spent less and less on basic social services. At the same time, rich countries fell far short of the commitments they made at the 1990 summit meeting to devote an average of 0.7 per cent of their GDP to development assistance.
Having been offered a chilling picture of the plight of children, acrimonious delegates reluctantly put their heads together to arrive at an agreement on the final document of the session, which will delineate specific goals and measures to improve the lives of children over the next 15 years. The US, the Vatican and some Islamic countries failed in their joint bid to secure an explicit policy against making abortion available to teenagers and to make abstinence for unmarried teenagers the centrepiece of sex education. Those pressing for a family to be rigidly defined as a "married man and woman" lost in their efforts as well.
The US did, however, manage to play down the importance of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a landmark 1989 treaty that the US has not ratified. Somalia, the only other remaining country in the world that had not ratified the treaty, signed the convention earlier last week and is expected to ratify it.
The US has opposed the treaty partly because it condemns the use of capital punishment against minors, a practice allowed by nearly half of American states. Conservatives in the US Congress have repeatedly objected to the treaty, saying they fear it prioritises the rights of children over those of parents -- allowing children to access certain health services without their consent, for instance.
The final declaration does not oblige any country to abolish capital punishment for juveniles, nor does it endorse abortion as a family planning method. Several countries and a host of children's advocacy groups had hoped the final document would rely on the Convention on the Rights of the Child as the legal standard for children's rights. As it turned out, the language agreed upon did not do any such thing.
Still, children's issues have no doubt climbed higher on the international agenda in past years, and the special session's final document will be useful for awareness-raising and will perhaps be used to improve laws. The participation of children at the conference has already shown sceptical governments how much they stand to gain from a real partnership with children.
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