Putting children first

"Making the world fit for children" is decidedly a noble goal. Why then is the Children's summit currently being held in New York beset by so much dissention? Negar Azimi reviews the controversy and reports on the Egyptian position
From 8-10 May children will be at the top of the international agenda as more than 70 heads of state, representatives from 3,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), business leaders and hundreds of child delegates gather in New York for the highest level United Nations meeting addressing the needs of children globally. Billed as an event without precedent, this week's UN Special Session on Children, originally meant to be held last September but postponed after the tragic events of that month, constitutes the first time that the General Assembly has held a meeting devoted exclusively to the status of youth at large. The session is designed to serve as a follow-up to the 1990 World Summit for Children, examining the progress made in implementing that seminal summit's goals, while also adopting a renewed plan of action for the next decade.
A noble mandate; nevertheless, the gathering is not without its controversies. The need to create a single conference outcome document representing, to the greatest possible extent, the concerns, orientations, and beliefs of every country in the world is a daunting task. As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, negotiations continued as only days before the start of the session, upwards of 10 per cent of the outcome document and accompanying plan of action, appropriately entitled "A World Fit for Children," remained to be finalised. Resolutions surrounding child labour, armed conflict, reproductive health, sexual exploitation, and the role of the all- encompassing United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) remained in the balance. One programme officer at the UNICEF headquarters in New York told the Weekly that the negotiations continued to be frenzied in nature -- "routinely on the verge of disaster."
Why do the aforementioned issues make the document, and by extension, the meeting at large, so controversial? Perhaps most prominent in inciting passions on all sides is a tension between a "rights-based" approach and one that advocates accommodating particular social, cultural and national contexts. Advocates of the rights-based approach tend to espouse the universality of certain rights, from the right to resist female genital mutilation (FGM) to the right to be free from the death penalty. The other side of the spectrum, meanwhile, recognises the specifics of context and refrains from such a strong language of universalities.
The centrepiece of the rights-based approach in the context of the upcoming UN Special Session and children's rights at large is 1989's UNCRC -- the most widely ratified UN convention in history -- with 191 nations being a party to it and its mandate. Among myriad provisions, the convention requires states to provide children with education and health care, and to protect them from discrimination, sexual and economic exploitation and other abuse. In 2000, the General Assembly accepted two optional protocols linked to the convention -- one on the involvement of children in armed conflict and the other on the use of children in prostitution and pornography. Only two countries, the United States and Somalia, have refused to ratify the UNCRC.
Why the reluctance? At least when it comes to the United States, the convention's prohibition on the use of the death penalty for offences committed before the age of 18 as well as its overwhelmingly federal nature tend to make the US view the document with disdain. Some simply point out that the United States has little tradition of recognising economic, social and cultural rights (as opposed to civil and political rights).
Proponents of the rights-based approach seek to treat the UNCRC as the framework for action and as the basis of the language of rights at this week's UN Special Session.
The US has consistently sought to eliminate or minimise references to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Declaration and Plan of Action of the UN Special Session, and has refused to accept language that refers to the UNCRC as the primary international standard for the promotion and protection of children's rights," Jo Becker, Children's Rights Advocate at Human Rights Watch, told the Weekly:
In fact, the US team at the session has sought to remove references to the "rights" of children at large, advocating the increasingly broad use of the term "well-being" instead.
Given the vociferous objections of the United States, it seems more than likely that the final document will leave the links between the outcome document and the UNCRC unclear, and by extension, will not fully recognise the convention as an all-encompassing statement of children's rights -- a standard yardstick of sorts.
Also contentious has been the subject of reproductive health. Through the course of negotiations leading up to the session, the United States and several Middle Eastern countries, among others, have tried to roll back international agreements stipulating that adolescents should and will have access to sexual and reproductive health programmes.
Monica Roa of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) told the Weekly that, in the days preceding the session,: the key paragraphs of the Outcome Document being argued over were essentially the ones related to reproductive rights issues. "The United States with the Vatican and the SDC group do not want to include reproductive services within their recommendations," Roa said. A recent report published by CRLP argued that in a reproductive health crisis in countries such as Zimbabwe (one highlighted amidst multiple countries), the impact of dismantling existing international agreements on adolescent reproductive rights at the UN Session would be disastrous.
Nevertheless, last June's Special Session of the General Assembly on HIV/AIDS (UNGASS) managed to defy tendencies towards things conservative. It produced a bold declaration broaching issues of condom access and use, human rights, drug use, and reproductive health services for women. There is, thus, a precedent for such an audacious document at a high level UN meeting.
Some, including international children's NGO Save the Children, allege that the greatest weakness of the outcome document as it stands is its failure to address the root causes of children's problems -- conflict, poverty, and the absence of commitment to the convention, among other things. Others argue that the document targets specific diseases (such as HIV/AIDS) while failing to look at the factors that facilitate the spread of diseases at large.
The 1990 World Summit for Children established seven major and 20 supporting goals. Governments were in turn urged to create and implement national plans of action. A mid-decade review was conducted in 1996, but this week's session will constitute the first large-scale assessment of progress over the course of the last 10 years. Secretary- General Kofi Annan released a report entitled "We the Children: Meeting the promises of the World Summit for Children," assessing progress since 1990. The report announces optimistically that considerable gains have been registered in multiple realms, including health; gains in battling polio, neonatal tetanus, diarrhea, vitamin A deficiency, and iodine deficiency figure prominently in his discourse. The report continues by noting that nearly one billion additional people have access to improved drinking water and more children are in school today than ever before in history.
Nevertheless, critics of the secretary-general's largely rosy assessment point out that a dismal number of the stated goals borne of 1990's World Summit have been met; in fact, most cite one mere substantive accomplishment -- that of improved protection of children -- while this goal was vaguely defined at best.
Indeed, the mortality rate for infants and the under-fives has declined since 1990, but only by 11 per cent -- not the intended 33 per cent. Goals in the areas of malnutrition and maternal mortality have also not been met. Universal access to safe drinking water and hygienic facilities is far from a reality, while more than 10 million children still die each year, most from wholly preventable causes. The number of children living in poverty, 600 million, is the largest in history, while half a million children have died at the hands of the AIDS scourge. Indeed, it seems that there is a long way to go in improving the plight of the world's children.
The UN Special Session has been the product of three preparatory meetings, or "PREPCOM" gatherings, held since May 2000. In each meeting, delegations from each country have gathered to negotiate the text of the outcome document, and furthermore, to propose alternative orientations. At each meeting, representatives of NGOs and children's rights advocates have been invited to review the draft of the document, while revisions have been incorporated to suit the needs of the largest number of constituents -- employing the lowest common denominator approach, as it were.
It remains to be seen if differences can be overcome in reaching some measure of agreement as to the need to prioritise children on the global agenda. Nevertheless, the true test will not lie in the degree of consensus reached in the privileged halls of the UN in New York this week, but rather, lie in the next 10 years -- largely dependent on the extent of the commitment governments and civil society choose to give to implementation, monitoring, and in the end, substantive change.
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