By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2002 (IPS)

A coalition of more than 100 advocacy groups criticised governments worldwide Wednesday for reneging on pledges to protect children from sexual abuse, violence, and exploitation.

“Millions of children are denied basic rights and suffer unconscionable abuse because governments have failed to live up to their commitments,” said Bill Bell of the British chapter of Save the Children.

Speaking on behalf of the Child Rights Caucus coalition, Bell said the three-day U.N. Special Session on Children, which began here Wednesday, is in danger of ushering in “another decade of broken promises”.

The meeting, which is being attended by more than 70 world leaders and more than 2,000 non-governmental organisation (NGO) representatives, is a follow-up to the 1990 World Summit for Children.

During the 1990s, international development assistance fell to new lows, according to the Caucus, and developing nations allocated only 12-14 percent of their national budgets to social services.

Despite pledges to support universal access to education, the Caucus said, only 2 percent of international aid now goes to schooling in poor countries.

Official development assistance (ODA) has dwindled every year since 1992, when it stood at about 63 billion dollars, it added.

ODA reached an all-time low of 0.22 percent of the combined gross national product (GNP) of the wealthy countries in 1997 – one-third of the 0.7 percent target agreed by the U.N. General Assembly more than 30 years ago. Only Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden consistently met the target during the 1990s.

Oliver Buston of the NGO Oxfam International urged increased investment in children’s education. “This is the first really credible attempt to tackle the global education crisis. What is urgently needed now is the money to make it work,” he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a report produced for this week’s talks, singled out chronic poverty as the biggest obstacle to meeting the needs and fulfilling the rights of children.

“At a time of unprecedented global prosperity and in a 30 trillion dollar global economy, half of humanity is desperately impoverished,” said the report, which went on to note that three billion people out of six billion survive on two dollars a day or less.

Of these, some 1.2 billion people live in what the World Bank categorises as absolute poverty. Half of them are children.

“Never in history have we seen such numbers. And never in the modern history of development cooperation have we seen overall aid to the world’s neediest countries fall to levels as low as they have in recent years,” Annan said.

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge told delegates Wednesday the developing world faces new challenges, many of which impact on children.

“If we are to seriously bring to centre-stage the rights and well-being of our children, investing in resources is an imperative,” she added. “Poverty reduction must also be made an integral part of our commitment for children.”

Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said globalisation had not reduced appalling hardships, especially for children in developing nations. “Poverty remained the biggest single obstacle, causing death, stultifying growth and breeding abject despair,” he said.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh asked the Assembly: “Are our children better off today than they were 10 years ago? If not, we must ask, what more needs to be done to improve the condition of our children?”

“Efforts to eradicate poverty are vital. This must begin with children and parents in the vulnerable groups,” she added.

Focusing specifically on the problems facing Africa, King Letsie III of Lesotho told the Special Session that the progress made since 1991 was a mixed one.

While notable progress has been made in the realisation of some of the goals, he said, there have been new threats and challenges making it necessary for the United Nations to meet again.

“For most of us in the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the central challenges we face in fulfilling the obligations which we undertook in 1990 include insecurity, severe and widespread poverty, famine, environmental degradation, internal conflicts and the spread of disease, including HIV/AIDS and malaria,” he said.

A world fit for children means a world where children are not killed, maimed or displaced by incessant armed conflicts; a world where children are not forcibly recruited into military services; a world where children are not subjected to and traumatised by sexual violence and mutilations.

And above all, he said, it is a world where children are not orphaned and left destitute because of AIDS and hunger.

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