United Nations, New York
USA
June 13, 2001

Madame chair,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and gentlemen,

I would like first to pay tribute to UNICEF and to Carol Bellamy and her many able colleagues. Their visionary and inspiring leadership continues to set the standard of effective activism for children. Never before in the history of humankind have so many countries and cultures worked together so diligently, and in such a sustained manner, for the well-being of their youth and their future generations.

I think all of us feel that here this week. This third session of the preparatory committee for the UN General Assembly special session on children is truly a humbling experience… but also an exhilarating one. It is humbling for each of us individually--because together we represent a bold attempt to direct our world’s resources and political will to improving the well-being of our children. Yet it is also exhilarating--because our experience since the World Summit for Children in 1990 confirms that we can change the world, if we make a determined and realistic effort to do so.

I speak to you as a member of the UNICEF Global Leadership Initiative--a movement that aims to spur regional and national efforts for the collective well-being of all future generations. Our global efforts for child rights are unprecedented in four important ways: in political participation at the level of heads of state and government; in the number of countries that have signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child; in setting quantifiable targets for progress in a wide range of children’s rights; and in vigorously pursuing these goals through regular monitoring, analysis, and follow-up.

As we embark on an important new phase in this global movement, I see two broad and immediate challenges: First, how can we achieve our targets, so that more children live healthier, longer, and more equitable lives? Second, how can we remain energized, innovative, and effective in our impact on the lives of real people, and avoid slipping into a combination of routine reporting and ceremonial meetings?

Within its own life span, this global movement for child rights is still in its adolescence. And like adolescents everywhere, our movement is characterized by learning, growing, evolving, and--one hopes--maturing. We must continue to be inspired by the vastness of our human idealism… but also guided by the practical constraints of our sense of realism. This is a perfect moment, therefore, to refocus sharply on our future goals, by building on the lessons of our journey together in the recent past. We have come a long way, from the mid-1980s when the first social mobilization experiments sharply reduced child deaths from a few preventable diseases in a handful of countries, to our targeting today of all rights for every woman and child in all the countries of the world.

The balance sheet of our results to date is mixed: we have fully achieved very, very few of the global goals set at the 1990 World Summit for Children; at the same time, we have achieved significant progress on virtually every single one of those goals. An over-arching priority for this meeting and for the September special session on children could be to identify the reasons for this apparent paradox, before we embark on the next stage of our efforts.

Why did we succeed in some areas, but fall far short in others? Were our goals unrealistic? Were the mechanisms for action ineffective? Was our time frame too ambitious? Did other, unanticipated, factors prevent us from making better progress?

I would like to suggest some issues that we might explore in this respect, based on global trends as well as our experiences in Jordan and the Middle East.

The first one is the real impact and value of global action, as opposed to national or regional initiatives. What and how have we benefited from setting global goals and norms? What is the measurable value added of worldwide data gathering, achievement rankings, national plans of action, and other results of the global approach of the early 1990s? We should decide soon on which effective global actions to expand, and which unproductive ones to discard.

Another issue concerns the real impact of participation by heads of state and government. This was critical in achieving national-level breakthroughs in the 1980s and early ‘90s. Now we need to know more precisely how leadership inspires action and promotes progress for children’s rights, how that impact can be sustained over time, and how it can be replicated at other levels of leadership throughout society. Last year, for example, in our region, we initiated regular meetings of Arab first ladies, and we are working with Arab heads of state to achieve the goals of the "Say Yes for children" campaign.

A third important issue is the power of effective partnerships, which have proven their worth at local, regional, and global levels. Government and private business, the mass media, civil society, and other sectors of society today routinely work together--yet we do not always understand why some partnerships succeed while others fail. We are exploring this further in our own region, by enhancing coordination among Arab NGOs working for children, and establishing a permanent forum for Arab child issues.

A fourth issue is how we can promote child rights and well-being through the immense power of partnerships within the worldwide commercial marketplace. Two of our greatest recent global successes were putting vaccines in the bodies of over 70 percent of the world’s babies, and putting iodine in over 70 percent of the world’s table and cooking salt. These goals were achieved in large part thanks to significant linkages with the business sector. Private companies and multinationals often have greater reach, and more direct impact on families, than do state institutions or international organizations. Can we achieve some of our next priority targets--iron deficiency comes to mind quickly--by working more closely with private businesses, for the benefit of all humankind?

The last issue I would like to mention is that of disparities. The available data shows that some global gaps are widening--for instance, in under-five mortality rates among the industrialized and least developed countries. The same is true within countries. Our first human development report in Jordan reveals persistent and even widening gaps in some indicators, such as infant mortality by region and employment by gender. Some of the worst disparities were not between urban and rural areas, as one generally expects to see, but rather between urban and suburban regions within the same governorate. We need to know more about the causes and consequences of such disparities--because they numb human hope, aggravate social and economic distress, and often lead to resentment, violence, and instability.

I mention these as some timely issues that we could consider during this year of renewed global commitment to the rights of all children. We can be proud of what we have done and continue to do: our goals are vast and noble, our track record is impressive, and our determination is robust. But we should beware the hidden danger of being so dazzled by the distant horizon that we lose sight of the more mundane tasks before us here and now.

Like children and adolescents, our efforts can only mature into effective adulthood by building on the cumulative lessons of youth. Now is the time to undertake a rigorous assessment of our movement’s strengths and weaknesses to date, and of its achievements and failures. So that when we set new targets and pledge renewed commitments--we do so on a rock-solid foundation of proven capabilities and realistic goals.

I look forward to working with you in the months and years ahead as we seek new and more productive ways of sharing our experiences and pooling our strengths. I thank you for your hard work and your attention, and for all that you will yet do for our gathering again in September and beyond. Thank you very much.

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