Chicago Tribune - May 9, 2002
Evan Osnos, Tribune national correspondent. Tribune news services contributed to this report

"We, the grown-ups, have failed you deplorably," Annan declared to a General Assembly chamber packed with heads of state as well as child delegates from more than 180 countries.

Despite vast leaps in science and global prosperity, millions of children die each year, victims of war, hunger and HIV/AIDS infection, Annan said, highlighting a few of the problems that are the focus of the three-day special session.

With topics ranging from the increase in child soldiers to sexual exploitation, the session aims to assess the world's progress on more than two dozen measures of children's health and well-being, and to set goals for the next 15 years.

"To the adults in this room, I would say, let us not make children pay for our failures anymore," Annan said.

In addition to some 3,000 delegates, the meeting also brings together 3,000 doctors, social workers and other representatives from non-governmental organizations.

Seeking practical proposals

To many in the audience, remedying past failures will mean leaving the session with tangible steps, rather than just commitments, to bettering the lives of the world's 2.1 billion children.

"I came here looking for much more practical proposals than in the past," said Dr. Paul Saoke, a Kenyan public health expert and a representative of Physicians for Social Responsibility. "I get appalled when people talk only about gross national product and per capita income. I want to know what can be done now, on the ground."

Yet even as the meeting opens, the session seems hamstrung by political standoffs. All participating nations must agree on a closing document that states shared goals. But the U.S. is opposing most UN members with a bid to remove references to "reproductive health services," which some American conservatives consider an endorsement of abortion.

"The U.S. position is holding up agreement on the issue of reproductive health," said Carol Bellamy, executive director of the United Nations Children Fund.

In his comments to the General Assembly on Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, leader of the U.S. delegation, pointedly underscored the Bush administration's commitment to promoting abstinence in discussions of sexual health.

"As President Bush has said, abstinence is the only sure way of avoiding sexually transmitted disease," Thompson said.

U.S. officials noted privately Wednesday that a compromise on that issue could be the addition of a footnote explaining that "health services" does not refer to abortion.

Concerns with wording

The U.S. also is at odds with its allies in its effort to block references in the closing document to the "rights of the child," a concept laid out in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The U.S. and Somalia are the only two nations that have not ratified the treaty, which some U.S. conservative groups condemn as a challenge to parental authority.

Jo Becker, children's rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said she believed the reluctance of the U.S. to join the 189 countries that have ratified the treaty could slow progress on substantive issues at the meeting.

"It is a real shame because it is forcing governments to fight very hard just to avoid steps backward," Becker said.

At the meeting, which was postponed last fall because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, nearly 400 children are sitting alongside 60 presidents, prime ministers and other high-level officials. Also participating are prominent business, religious and human-rights figures, including former South African President Nelson Mandela and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

Their aim is to assess global progress by measuring conditions against goals set by the 1990 World Summit for Children.

Since that time, UN figures show, infant mortality has dropped by one-third in more than 60 countries, polio has been all but wiped out, and many more children have gained access to immunization and schooling.

Still, about 10 million children die each year from preventable diseases, and an estimated 150 million children are malnourished.

Return on investment

Addressing these problems, Annan said, may require greater investment now but will save money later.

"[We] know from experience that for every dollar invested in the development of a child, there is a $7 return for all of society," Annan said.

Among the conclusions to be drawn from the past decade, delegates are devoting particular attention to new and haunting problems in Africa, where civil wars have created some 300,000 child soldiers and an HIV/AIDS epidemic has orphaned millions of children.

Many of the panel discussions and roundtable debates are consumed by Africa's problems.

In one presentation, Dr. Jose Martines, an infant-health expert from the World Health Organization, showed a map depicting how the HIV epidemic has affected regions of the world.

Of the 580,000 children who died last year of AIDS, he said, an estimated 90 percent were in sub-Saharan Africa.

In those regions, Martines said, "HIV and AIDS are wiping out progress in reducing child mortality."

Martines was among a panel of international health officials who discussed general education and medical strategies for reducing the spread of the AIDS virus from mothers to infants.

But to Saoke, the Kenyan doctor, the debate about strategies and education was moot if people do not have enough food to eat--and he drew applause when he told the panel so.

"You have to realize that people don't say, `I may die from AIDS in 10 years,'" he said. "They are saying, `I may starve to death tomorrow.'"

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