General Assembly Session 54 meeting 52

The President

This morning the General Assembly, in accordance with the decisions taken at its 3rd plenary meeting on 17 September and its 33rd plenary meeting on 11 October 1999, is holding, under agenda item 165, the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

When I spoke at the opening of this fifty-fourth session of the General Assembly in September, I described some major challenges that face us on the eve of the new millennium. Uppermost in my mind then, as today, was the plight of many millions of children in the world who continue to die of preventable causes; who are victimized by drugs, crime and sexual abuse; who continue to face a future of hunger, poverty and illiteracy; who are subjected to hazardous and exploitative work; who are targets of violence or victims of neglect; and, above all, who continue to be used as child soldiers to fight the bloody and destructive wars of adults.

With all this in mind, I am particularly pleased to deliver this statement today on the occasion of the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the adoption by the General Assembly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

There are, I am told, over 2 billion children in the world today: 2 billion precious fruit trees and beautiful flowers of the human family -- our souls. Their protection and development are crucial to the future survival of humanity. We must not fail our children, because the consequences are unthinkable. What happens to children in their early years determines, for better or for worse, their growth and their place in society. This, in turn, has influence on their role and character; we are parents, and we know this. That is why so much of the future depends upon the rewarding opportunities and care that we provide for our children when they are young. They need special and priority attention for a variety of compelling reasons -- moral, social and economic, as well as cultural.

Since the adoption of the Convention, children's interests are now placed higher on public and developmental agendas than ever before, and significant recognition of their rights is reflected in the initiatives that United Nations Member States undertake in fields such as public policy, law reform and enforcement and social security. At the same time, however, the process of globalization has sharply widened the economic and social gap between and within States, with women and children in the Third World being placed in a precarious position at the receiving end.

Most countries in the developing world are plagued by major economic problems, with bleak prospects for growth that complicate any prospects for fully realizing the rights of children. The worldwide external debt burden represents yet another major obstacle to social progress and caring for children. A child in the developing world is born with debt baggage averaging $417. Sub-Saharan Africa spends more on servicing its debt of over $200 billion than on the health and education of its many hundreds of millions of children. There is more: because of her gender, the girl child in particular suffers discrimination and abuse for a great part of her life. Moreover, the girl child faces deep traditional prejudices and is denied opportunities for equality, education, nutrition, health care and, often, survival itself. It is therefore important to take account of the special needs of the girl child.

The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action adopted a specific critical criterion of concern with regard to the girl child and agreed to the life-cycle approach that should be included in all programmes and policies aimed at benefiting the girl child. Because of gender discrimination and unceasing violence, millions of girls, like their mothers and sisters before them, continue to be denied their basic rights, which means they lose out on opportunities to participate fully as adults in the political, economic and social life of their countries -- namely, power, wealth and access.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a global menace of almost unimaginable proportions; yet it is a killer monster to which the global community is still failing to provide the kind of concerted response that is so urgently needed. HIV/AIDS is a non-discriminatory enemy of humanity that respects no borders.

The scourge of war, with children and women as the primary victims, continues to threaten decades of political, economic and social gains, especially in Africa, driving millions away from their homes and countries, while subjecting many innocent children to unspeakable brutality. On 25 August 1999, during the Namibian presidency of the Security Council, I presided over an open debate on children and armed conflict. At the end of that debate, the Council adopted its first-ever resolution on the plight of children in armed conflict, resolution 1261 (1999), and requested the Secretary-General to report back in 2000 on its implementation.

The Security Council, inter alia,

"Strongly condemn[ed] the targeting of children in situations of armed conflict, including killing and maiming, sexual violence, abduction and forced displacement, recruitment and use of children in armed conflict in violation of international law, ... and call[ed] on all parties concerned to put an end to such practices". (Security Council resolution 1261 (1999), para. 2)

I believe that the General Assembly, as well as the Economic and Social Council and other key bodies in the United Nations system, should follow suit and do even more. The General Assembly, for its part, must lead this crusade by example.

But such condemnation, though laudable, is not enough. Ugly and painful abuses continue today in many countries in the world that are currently engulfed in armed conflicts. It is for this reason that I call upon delegations present here to demonstrate their support for the peace and security agenda for children that was launched in February this year by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The Executive Director of UNICEF, Ms. Carol Bellamy, is a hard-working champion of the rights and welfare of children. She can always count on my cooperation and support. We are all in this together, because we are saving our own lives.

In the same vein, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Ambassador Olara Otunnu, has proposed practical measures to prevent or mitigate the suffering of children who are caught up in conflicts in many parts of the world. I encourage him to continue with his worldwide campaign on behalf of our children, the leaders of the twenty-first century and beyond.

The years 2001 to 2010 have been proclaimed by the General Assembly as the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World. We must translate that lofty declaration of intent into a viable plan of action, buttressing it with generous funds and resources and with unwavering commitment by the entire international community.

I want to seize this opportunity once again to call upon the General Assembly at this and all future sessions to ensure that the rights and well-being of our children are an ever-present responsibility all year round and that they are put on the front burner for action. I can hardly think of any better way for the General Assembly to fulfil the Charter's vision of a peaceful, just and prosperous world, and the Convention's promise of a better future for every child.

I call on the Deputy Secretary-General.

The Deputy Secretary-General

Today we have cause to rejoice, and I am happy to be here with the members of the General Assembly to celebrate. In a few days, the Convention on the Rights of the Child will be 10 years old -- a child itself, really. It has already become the most widely ratified human rights instrument.

This is a wonderful victory. All children are now recognized by a near-universal, legally binding instrument as individuals with special needs, who are entitled to special protection. Maybe more important, they are recognized as individuals with dignity, who have the rights of full human beings. To many of us, this may seem almost too obvious for words, but it took until the last decade of the twentieth century to turn that recognition into an international Convention which spells out, for example, a child's right to be free from economic and sexual exploitation, to receive an education and to have access to health care. Redefining needs as rights is not merely a question of terminology. A right is something you can actually claim.

To achieve truly universal ratification of the Convention would be a fitting way to enter the new century, a century that will belong to the children of today. It is a concern to us all that the United States is one of the only two countries that have not yet ratified this pillar of human rights law, and I should like to take this opportunity to urge it to do so as soon as possible.

The ratification of the Convention by so many countries means that its principles are becoming part of national law everywhere, from Viet Nam to Tunisia, and from Portugal to Colombia. Countries are making school attendance compulsory, strengthening laws on child prostitution and pornography, adopting a minimum working age and affording immigrant and refugee children better protection against discrimination. In several States the Convention has been a factor in deciding court cases involving children.

The Convention has also inspired and guided the further strengthening of international standards on children's rights. Last June we all welcomed the adoption of the new International Labour Organization Convention No. 182 on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour -- forms of child labour which include debt bondage, the forced recruitment of children soldiers, child prostitution and the use of children for illegal activities.

In addition, efforts are under way to strengthen the Convention on the Rights of the Child itself through two optional protocols, on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sexual exploitation of children. I urge all Governments to support these efforts as a further step towards ending some of the most shocking and shameful violations of children's rights.

However, we shall not be judged as a world community by what we say we should or will do, but by what we actually do. In practice, there remain colossal obstacles to the universal protection of children's rights. And this is no wonder, since of all the difficult issues we deal with at the United Nations I cannot think of one, old or new, that does not have a child's face.

The greatest single enemy of children's rights is poverty. By keeping millions of children, especially girls, out of school, it denies them their right to primary education. By putting huge numbers to work, often in exploitative or harmful conditions, it denies them their right to rest and play, as well as their right to good health and well-being. By leaving many to fend for themselves on the streets, it deprives them of the right to be brought up by their families. And as malnutrition kills thousands every day, it even deprives them of their right to live.

The Deputy Secretary-General

If we really believe in the rights of children, we should fight with all our strength against poverty and for social development. If we really believe in the rights of children, we should prevent or settle as soon as we can the armed conflicts that make seven-year-old children into soldiers, that maim them, that orphan them, that make them refugees. We must exterminate the AIDS epidemic, which condemns newborns to death or to a pariah life, and which makes young adolescents into the heads of large families. We must eradicate drug trafficking and assure that the Internet does not facilitate the distribution of child pornography. We must stigmatize sexual tourism.

This disturbing list shows clearly that children's rights are not some abstraction. The absence of respect for them is a real tragedy, experienced day in and day out by the most vulnerable among us. For this reason, if we are to make the rights of children a reality, we must act in a wide range of fields. In other words, all the rights of the child are so intimately interlinked and so closely associated with peace and development that if we succeed in guaranteeing respect for all the rights of all children everywhere, we will have radically changed the world for all human beings, of whatever age.

Highlighting the rights of children, therefore, necessarily means attacking the root causes of a whole set of problems that lie at the heart of the mission of the United Nations. The United Nations Population Fund, the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations Development Programme, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and of course United Nations Children's Fund -- almost all the United Nations agencies have a role to play. Today in peacekeeping operations and in humanitarian missions, the fate of children is officially a high priority. In the context of its thematic debates, the Security Council has focused on the situation of children. As for the Secretary-General, he took a decisive step when he excluded children under the age of 18 from participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations.

Nonetheless, these efforts are meaningless unless Governments and civil society take up the challenge. At all the major conferences of the nineties, the rights of children have been taken into account and have been reflected in the commitments made. I invite the Governments of all Member States to remain faithful to those commitments and to keep the situation of children very much in mind during follow-up conferences and the Millennium Summit. If Governments continue to integrate the provisions of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child into their national legislation, if they disseminate those provisions as widely as possible and, above all, if they really put into practice the great principles of the right to life and to development, of non-discrimination and of the primacy of children's interests, then States will have fulfilled their obligations.

But obviously the Convention is not just an international treaty binding the States that have signed it. Rather, it is a universal instrument that has permeated the collective consciousness and become the symbol of a world movement in favour of social progress. Whether in respect of tourism, the Internet, pharmaceuticals or sporting goods manufacturers, a new awareness and a sense of responsibility are leading today to concrete initiatives that are transforming the lives of millions of children. Whatever the price, this movement must continue; even more, it must grow, because children's rights are the business of everyone, of every family, every group, every school and every company, every State and every society.

The succeeding generations mentioned in the Charter are not only those in the distant future. The first are already among us -- the children of today -- and it is today, therefore, that we must start protecting them, not only from the scourge of warfare, but also from all violations of their fundamental rights as recognized in the Declaration and by its 191 signatories.

The President

I thank the Deputy Secretary-General for her statement.

Mr. Baali (Algeria)

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