UNICEF Reports on the State of the World's Children.

The world's children are born healthier, are better protected against disease, and are educated in higher numbers than in past decades because of concerted international action focusing on the rights of children, according to a new report released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Looking back at recent improvements in children's lives and forward toward new challenges, the report, The State of the World's Children 2000, lays the groundwork for a meeting on children's rights planned in conjunction with a special session of the United Nations General Assembly to be held in 2001.

"Humanity has seen stunning advances and has made enormous strides for children," writes author Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, in the report. Among the gains is an overall decrease in mortality of children below the age of five. Through extensive vaccination, polio and smallpox have been nearly eradicated and measles has been reduced by 85%. Neonatal tetanus, a major cause of infant mortality, is down more than 25%. Providing vitamin A supplements to at-risk children has reduced blindness, and iodine supplements have lowered the incidence of mental retardation. More children are currently in school than at any other time in history.

Still, critical challenges remain, according to Bellamy. "The world has more children living in poverty than it did 10 years ago," she points out in the report. Furthermore, although mortality in early childhood has decreased throughout much of the world, some regions are seeing declines in overall expected life span, dropping to pre-1960 levels in the areas hardest hit by HIV and AIDS. The AIDS pandemic has had a double impact on children, both infecting them and destabilizing their lives by turning many into orphans. War, violence, and natural disasters in the last decade have also made the world more dangerous for children, according to the report. Wars between poor nations have increasingly included children as both soldiers and civilian targets.

Social stratification also affects children's lives. Despite academic gains for children in general, girls around the world continue to be educated less than boys. According to Donna Petersen, an associate professor of maternal and child health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, this is especially problematic because women usually make the health care and economic decisions in families. "If they don't read," she says, "it's that much harder to get the word out to families about issues that impact their health."

The UNICEF report touches only lightly on environmental issues. This is an important oversight, suggests Devra Davis, a senior scientist at the World Resources Institute. "Unlike a lot of things that affect children's health, the environment is something we can do something about directly," she says. Improving disease control, education, and childhood mortality were among the goals of children's rights initiatives set out a decade ago by the United Nations' 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1990 World Summit for Children. Rather than moving on from immunization and nutrition to sanitation and environmental improvement, which were also highlighted in the earlier initiatives, the current report focuses on complex, entrenched social factors such as poverty, war, discrimination against women, and the growing gap between the rich and poor as central problems that must be addressed to improve the lives of children. "Intergenerational patterns of poverty, violence and conflict, discrimination, and disease are not unconquerable," writes Bellamy. "What's more, given the resources the world has at hand, these deadly cycles can be broken within a single generation." The report calls on governments, communities, the private sector, families, and individuals to provide leadership in these areas, and sets the stage for addressing these issues at the planned 2001 meeting.

The State of the World's Children 2000, which was released 13 December 1999, is available on the UNICEF Web site located at http://www.unicef.org/.