The personal is political.

Issues that only a few generations ago belonged mostly to the realm of the personal-how many children a woman might have or how parents treat their children, for example-have now spilled into the social and even political arenas. Certain of these issues are increasingly having "major political implications", Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar acknowledged in his annual report to the Assembly.

The social consequences of war and civil strife, drug use, debt, environmental abuse, the population explosion, racial, sexual and economic injustice and other ills-what Assembly President Joseph Garba aptly calls "the pathos of poverty and despair in the third world" will have increased visibility at the forty-fourth session.

The Assembly is expected to adopt a convention on the rights of the child and launch the International Literacy Year, 1990.

Final arrangements will be made for the Eighth UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, to be held in Cuba next year. The Congress meets every five years.

Protection of human rights will be given much attention by the Assembly's Third Committee, which deals with social, cultural and humanitarian matters.

Among the human rights-related issues are prevention of torture and other "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" and elimination of all forms of religious intolerance. An optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the abolition of the death penalty is expected to be approved. Wiping out all discrimination against women and improving the lives of rural women loom large among women-related issues. The role of families in the development process will also be discussed.

The large number of refugees and displaced persons around the world "continues to be a sombre commentary on the present state of affairs", Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar stated in his annual report. The Assembly will look into this question, particularly the results of recent conferences on refugees in Central America, Indo-China and southern Africa.

The continuing work of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and a report of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories will also be reviewed.

Apartheid in South Africa, racism and the way that ethnic minorities are treated throughout the world will again be taken up by the Assembly.

Self-determination and decolonization-and how foreign economic and military activities may obstruct both-traditional issues straddling the political and the human rights arenas, will be dealt with in both the Third and the Fourth (Decolonization) Committees.

Questions related to population, the aging, youth, and disabled persons are again on the agenda. One consequence of the explosive population growth", Mr. Perez de Cuellar reported, "is that the number of people living in absolute poverty, without adequate food or shelter, has increased at an alarming rate".

Aware that, as the Secretary-General puts it, "the hunger and homelessness of millions remain a rebuke to civilization", the forty-fourth Assembly will examine important strategies on these and other basic human needs.

His 1989 Report on the World Social Situation stresses that poverty remains a major challenge to the world community. Pockets of social poverty persist in all societies, but the greatest numbers of the absolutely poor in the world are in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the report points out.