In an angry world ... suffer the children.

They are the innocent victims of some 40 raging conflicts in the world - approximately 1.5 million children killed, more than 4 million disabled, 5 million in refugee camps and 12 million homeless.

A recent United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) exhibition, "No War Anymore", held in the public lobby at UN Headquarters in New York, expressed the thoughts in words, as well as in simple drawings, of some of these children who live in terrifying conditions. Children - from Somalia, Cambodia, Mozambique, the former Yugoslavia and other places where war threatens young lives - have touchingly made known their longing for peace.

Wrote one child whose words were on exhibit for thousands to see: "Some people say you have to pay a lot for peace. I don't think it costs anything."

"Peace", noted another young writer, "is when it is real quiet and you can hear it when there is peace."

"Peace is seeing friends again", one child wrote simply.

For those who go to bed each night in peaceful surroundings, it can be difficult to even try to imagine the feelings of a child from Afghanistan who wrote: "Peace means you can come home ... that you no longer have to hide and be afraid."

And there are youngsters who do not even understand the meaning of the word peace. "I have never seen peace ... I don't know what peace is", wrote a child from Mozambique.

The exhibition underscored the grim reality that in many of today's armed conflicts, more children and women die than soldiers. Food is used as a weapon, and freedom from suffering remains an elusive dream.

According to the organizers, the overall intent of the exhibit was to show young people, as well as adults, that wars are never a solution for any nation, and to demonstrate the urgent necessity for children of all countries to learn how to settle differences, conflicts and tensions peacefully, through dialogue and tolerance.

That the exhibition struck its mark was underscored by the largest contributions any UNICEF exhibit has ever received. One volunteer was stunned by the generosity of a woman who stuffed two crisp hundred-dollar bills into the collection box after viewing the exhibit.

A poignant message from a Cambodian child brought to light the fact that children mature early in war situations. Displayed in a section labelled "Hidden Wounds", it read: "Sometimes I want to cry. But I don't want other children to see it. So I cry only when it rains."

An Ethiopian child's thoughts under "Learning to Cope" noted: "War is cruelty. It's a situation where different groups have a sort of drama. You have two sides that hate each other. In the middle are innocent people, the children, the ones who get hurt."

Like a number of other young artists from the former Yugoslavia, 11-year-old Ivana expressed her feelings about her war-torn country on canvas. The picture "War and Peace" shows a hilly, rural landscape. The right side of the drawing is peaceful and quiet, while the other side shows a hill filled with black firing tanks and black planes dropping bombs.

The art of 13-year-old Miroslav was more hopeful-with a large sun as a backdrop, three young people are standing with linked arms on a green lawn.

Iva, a 10-year-old, depicted her hopes for the future with a blue dove hovering over brightly dressed girls holding balloons, some of which read "Mir", meaning "peace" in SerboCroatian.

"The overriding obligation to provide humanitarian relief even in the midst of war and civil strife", noted a UNICEF exhibit brochure, "is an idea that has gained increasing acceptance in recent years. The right and duty of the international community to intervene to protect innocent civilians, especially women and children, is now being recognized worldwide. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Declaration of the World Summit for Children have reinforced this new ethic with the force of international law and high-level political commitment." Together, these two documents provide the legal and moral framework to advocate on behalf of children.

UNICEF recognizes children as "bridges" or "zones" of peace in times of conflict, and suggests that it is the responsibility of families and combatants on all sides, as well as government services, non-governmental organizations and international agencies to see to their protection and well-being.

The reality and urgency of helping the millions of war-traumatized children is clearly brought to light by a poem written by 12-year old Edima Suleymanovich, a young girl from the city of Sarajevo in Bosnia-herzegovina which has been under siege for more than six months. She wrote:

In my dreams I go among the ruins

of the old part of town

looking for a bit of stale bread.

My mother and I inhale the fumes of

gunpowder and I imagine it to be the smell of pies,

cakes and kebab.

Then a shot rings out in the street of

dignity

many people are wounded sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers.

I reach out and touch a trembling,

        injured hand.
        I touch death.

Terrified I realize this is not a dream It is just another day in Sarajevo.

Hope for children dimmed by new

conflicts, UNICEF Board told

A "new emerging ethic" for children is threatened as the world enters a new era of turmoil and "wanton disregard for the most vulnerable", James P. Grant, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) told the agency's Executive Board at its 1993 session (New York, 26 April-7 May).

Children and women had been "grotesquely abused as instruments of conflict as well as victims", he said.

Despite that, great progress had been made in such areas as curbing infant and child death rates, which had been reduced by more than half, and in programmes for global immunization and oral rehydration therapy.

If the goals of the 1990 World Summit for Children could be achieved by the year 2000, it would have a profound effect on the serious population and environmental challenges facing mankind, he said.

Summing up the session's general debate, Mr. Grant said two threads had run through the debate. One was the sense that "we are embarked together on an exciting enterprise to eliminate the worst manifestations of poverty in the world" by the end of the century. The second was an awareness of the need to balance competing demands: "loud emergencies" against silent tragedies; expanding services with promoting capacities; and the urgent needs of newly independent States of Eastern Europe and Central Asia with the longstanding needs of the developing countries.

Another important issue was the need for increased resources. It was "senseless to provide billions for peace-keeping and not fully fund the much smaller amounts required for the provision of humanitarian assistance", Mr. Grant said. Only 10 per cent of the $150-million humanitarian appeal for Somalia for 1993 had been contributed, while over $1 billion had been spent in the military intervention there, he added

Among its 23 recommendations, the Board endorsed the intermediate mid-decade) goals for 1995 of the UNICEF/WORLD Health Organization Joint Committee on Health Policy for 1995, relating to the World Summit for Children. Among these goals are: a reduction of measles deaths by 95 per cent; the elimination of neonatal tetanus through immunization and clean delivery; achieving at least 80 per cent oral rehydration therapy use in selected countries; virtual elimination of iodine deficiency disorders'. and ending the distribution of free or low cost breast-milk substitutes in all maternity centres and hospitals by June 1994.

Support was asked for family planning where appropriate, and for the Baby-friendly Hospital initiative in Member States. Action was also taken on programmes for the urban poor, the UNICEF response to the latest UN environment plan, "Agenda 21", and universal ratification by 1995 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. So far, some 144 countries had ratified it.