**** Find out more about Universal Children's Day, 20 November 2003, at:
http://www.hrea.org/feature-events/child-rights-day.html

Children's rights at heart of Millennium Development Goals

NEW YORK, 20 November 2003 - On the 14th anniversary today of the
international adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy called on world leaders to put
children at the heart of their development agendas.

"The generation of children being born today are the ones who need us to
achieve the goals we have set for ourselves," Bellamy said, referring to
the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the nations of the world in
2000. "We've promised that by 2015, all girls and boys will be in school;
that the spread of AIDS will be reversed; that poverty and hunger will no
longer affect more than a billion people.

The generation that will hold us accountable to these promises is already
here."

Bellamy called on governments to renew their commitments to ensuring that
every child's full rights are protected and fulfilled. She stressed that
these rights are central to achieving all development goals.

"Although the world has made tremendous progress since 1989 to see that
children's rights are universally accepted and realized, we are not there
yet," said Bellamy. "Children are still forced to serve as soldiers,
children orphaned by AIDS are abandoned by society, millions of children
die from preventable diseases -- as do their mothers. The rights of these
marginalized and forgotten children need to be our highest priority if we
really want to achieve the social and economic goals we've set."

The Millennium Goals present a series of time-bound, quantifiable
development targets. If the world is to eradicate extreme poverty and
eliminate hunger -- the first of the goals -- children now being born must
get what previous generations of marginalized children have not gotten: a
healthy start in life; a quality basic education; and a safe and loving
environment in which to thrive.

UNICEF's mission for children is central to achieving the Millennium
Development Goals. Some examples of how UNICEF is working with governments
to achieve the goals include:

* Providing an expanded set of immunizations against childhood diseases,
as well as basic health care for children
* Efforts to ensure that all boys and girls have a quality basic education
* Raising awareness about HIV/AIDS to give young people the knowledge,
skills and support they need to protect themselves
* Working to protect children from violence, abuse, exploitation and
discrimination
* Providing children in their earliest years with services they need to
survive and thrive, including sound nutrition and clean water

At the heart of UNICEF's mission is the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, which was adopted by Member States of the United Nations in 1989.
The convention, the most widely ratified treaty in history, spells out the
basic rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to
develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and
exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social
life.

Bellamy noted that with the global endorsement of the Millennium
Development Goals, child rights must come to the forefront of long-term
social and economic development thinking.

"The Convention is a sine qua non of the Millennium Development Goals,"
said Bellamy. "If children's rights to education, to protection and to
survival and health are not fully realized, the world will not be on track
to meet the goals. True development progress hinges on children."