Global strategy to secure well-being of children asked.

Global strategy to secure well-being of children asked

Promoting a better and healthier life for children, after ensuring their survival, will increasingly occupy the agenda of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in the 1990s.

The pursuit of primary health care systems, safe motherhood activities, birth spacing, better water supply and sanitation, and basic education, particularly for women and girls, will be UNICEF priorities through the end of the century.

At its 1989 session (17-28 April, New York) the UNICEF Executive Board asked the Fund to formulate a global strategy through the last decade of the century to promote the well-being of children.

Major goals for the year 2000 are:

* Reduction of infant and under-five child mortality rates in all countries by 50 per cent or to 50 and 70 per 1,000 live births respectively, whichever is less;

* Reduction of maternal mortality rate by 50 per cent;

* Annual reduction of infant, child and maternal mortality rates by at least 3.5 per cent, once the above goals are reached;

* Elimination of severe malnutrition and 50 per cent reduction of moderate malnutrition;

* Universal access to safe drinking water and eradication of guinea worm disease by 1995 in affected countries;

* Universal access to sanitary means of excreta disposal;

* Universal basic education for children and accelerated adult literacy programmes, especially for women;

* Improved protection of children in especially difficult circumstances.

UNICEF wants these goals incorporated in the international development strategy now being prepared for the proposed fourth UN Development Decade, 1991-2000.

A world summit for

children

James P. Grant, reappointed to a third five-year term as Executive Director, proposed to delegates that a world summit for children be held, stating that "the time is right for world leaders to place children at the centre of world concerns". Leaders from more than 40 countries already backed the initiative, he said, as did the NGO Committee on UNICEF.

The Board also urged continued support for the 1987 Bamako Initiative, elimination of guinea worm disease, reaching the poorest among the poor, and voluntary debt-reduction schemes to benefit children. Other matters dealt with drug abuse by children; environment, development and children; and the impact of tobacco smoking on children and women.

The Fund also wants to help countries apply the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the General Assembly is expected to adopt later this year.

Bamako Initiative

takes off

UNICEF is to spend $10.5 million to get the innovative Bamako Initiative off the ground by the end of 1991. Donors will be asked to support individual country efforts.

Seven countries are already developing programmes under the Initiative: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, United Republic of Tanzania and Zaire. Half a dozen other countries are preparing them.

Originally approved in 1987 by African health ministers meeting in Malihs capital, the Bamako Initiative seeks grass-roots participation and a steady supply of inexpensive but good-quality drugs to make primary health care universally accessible to children and women in sub-Saharan Africa. The Initiative has received strong political support from the region's leaders and is also a priority for the World Health Organization (WHO).

To reach the

poorest

of the poor

How to reach the poorest among the poor is another task ahead for UNICEF. The Board authorized efforts to identify who is being bypassed by basic development services and activities and why, as a first step towards devising ways to reach them. The focus will be on children and mothers in least developed and other low-income countries.

UNICEF will explore with regional banks and other multilateral institutions voluntary debt reduction schemes that might be used to benefit children in developing countries and will invite all private and official creditors to consider that possibility. It will also continue to finance its Special Adjustment Fund for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The rapidly growing problem of drug abuse by children will get immediate attention from UNICEF. The Board wants the problem assessed, particularly among children living in extreme poverty and in especially difficult circumstances. Meanwhile, UNICEF will co-operate with Governments in prevention programmes for minors in especially difficult conditions.

The Board also decided that UNICEF will take environmental implications into account in all its programmes and that it will become more actively involved in preventing tobacco use.

A high-level UNESCO/UNICEF Joint Committee on Education Policy was established. UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor told the Board that both organizations were sponsoring a World Conference on Education for All--Meeting Basic Learning Needs, in Bangkok, from 5 to 9 March 1990. The other sponsors are the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank.

At the session, Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak was awarded the 1989 Maurice Pate Award in recognition of her outstanding leadership and contributions to the children of Egypt.