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Creating a World Fit for Children

From May 8-10, heads of state, government and civil society leaders and more than 400 child representatives gathered in New York for the United Nations Special Session on Children, the most important international conference on children since the UN Summit for Children in 1990. In this interview with the SGI Quarterly, Kul Chandra Gautam, deputy executive director of UNICEF, discusses the progress being made to improve the situation of the world's children.

SGI Quarterly: How would you assess the decade since the first World Summit for Children in 1990?

Kul Chandra Gautam: In the 1990s we had many summits and conferences of the United Nations, and sometimes people say, "What good are these conferences? They produce lots of papers, good photo opportunities, but not much happiness." Goals are "ever set but never met." Looking at all the conferences of the 1990s, I believe it is fair to say that the World Summit for Children (WSC) was perhaps the most systematically followed up and rigorously monitored, and it produced some very remarkable results. Goals were not only set, but they were met.

Let me give you two or three examples. As a result of the goals to reduce infant and child mortality rates, by the year 2000 there were three million fewer children dying annually than 10 years earlier. At the beginning of the decade diarrhea was the number one killer of children. Three million children used to die every year because of diarrhea. The progress of the 1990s has reduced diarrhea deaths by 50 percent, from three million to one and a half million. Another area is immunization, where coverage has remained high in most countries, and polio is now on the verge of eradication. Polio used to cripple 300,000 children every year in 1990. Last year we had less than 500 cases. And we expect that in one or two years polio will be completely eradicated from the world. That was a major commitment which came out of the WSC that is actually being achieved.

Finally, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) had just come into being in 1990, and the Summit pushed for its universal adoption. The CRC has become the most universally embraced and ratified convention in the world. Only two countries haven't ratified it. It is tremendous that so many countries have not only ratified it but are implementing it--national laws are being changed to protect children, to promote their well-being. So these have been significant developments in the last 10 years, although, of course, there have also been some setbacks.

SGIQ: What enabled the Summit to be so well followed up?

KCG: I think there were two or three things. One is that the cause of children evokes universal solidarity and support. Children are nonpolitical. You can have governments from any side of the political spectrum, but everybody agrees on priority for children.

But it is one thing to say priority for children, but quite another thing to actually do something about that. Fortunately the Summit set some goals that were not very costly to pursue and to monitor. With a small amount of investment big results can be achieved which benefit millions--maybe hundreds of millions--of children. That was the genius of the WSC, to identify those goals that could be pursued on a large scale with a relatively modest amount of investment. Immunization is one of those goals, for example. For the cost of one aircraft carrier or one big hydroelectric dam you can immunize all the children of an entire continent.

Another wonderful example is salt iodization, which is very important in the fight against Iodine Deficiency Disorders, the number one cause of mental retardation among children. Salt iodization costs pennies! Everybody in the world consumes salt. And when we started iodizing salt, we had, in the last decade, fantastic progress. At the beginning of the decade, only about one billion people in the world consumed iodized salt. Most of them were in Europe, North America, Japan and Australia. Last year we estimated that three billion people consume iodized salt. In other words, two billion more people consuming iodized salt. And how much money did we spend? Less than 100 million dollars in external assistance. That's an amazing bargain! What can you do for 100 million dollars that reaches two billion people? Even Coca-Cola or Microsoft cannot reach that many people. Their advertising budget alone is far bigger. So the WSC was able to identify these low-cost, high-impact interventions for children, and I think that was another secret of its success.

The third factor, without wanting to be immodest, is that you had an organization like UNICEF that worked in all countries and that vigorously pursued follow-up with all government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). That played a major role, because you had a dedicated organization, with very extensive networks in a large number of countries, which was very persistent in pursuing the goals and the targets of the Summit.

SGIQ: What is your evaluation of the recently concluded United Nations Special Session on Children?

KCG: The recent Special Session on Children was helpful in pursuing the agenda of the WSC. And it was remarkable in a number of ways. Firstly, the summit of 1990 was a summit among government leaders; this time we had a large number of government leaders, but we also had leaders from all other walks of life: from civil society, from NGOs, from the media. We had parliamentary leaders; there were religious leaders; we had leaders ranging from Nelson Mandela to Bill Gates. This was truly a summit of leadership and not just of governmental or political leaders. So that was remarkable. And they all came for the cause of children.

The second thing that was remarkable was that this was not only a special session for children, it was a special session with children. Children were actively involved. We had 400 young people who attended and played a very important and active role. The adult leaders were very impressed by the creativity, the clear thinking and good, positive ideas of the young people. They were most inspiring.

The Summit has approved an agenda called "A World Fit For Children," and it has identified four or five priority areas: health, education, HIV/AIDS and protection of children against exploitation such as in armed conflict, child labor or sexual exploitation. In all of these areas it came up with very specific and concrete goals to be achieved in the next 10 to 15 years. So we do believe that the Special Session has given a further momentum for continuing to complete the unfinished business of the last decade, but also it has highlighted a number of new areas. Now, of course, the important thing will be implementation. I believe if we invest enough, we can make an enormous difference. I could imagine four or five million lives being saved and many millions being protected as a result of implementing the outcomes of the Special Session.

SGIQ: Compared to 1990, do you think that now the political and economic investment required for implementation is going to be greater?

KCG: I think that we are dealing now with more complex issues that do not have simple solutions and for which the main action needed is not only financial but political commitment. And, yes, some of these issues are going to be harder. There are no technical fixes. We continue to have the very practical, doable, affordable health, education, nutrition, water supply and sanitation goals from the 1990s that either are not yet achieved or need to be sustained, but there are also the more complex issues, which are going to require a much greater degree of political and social mobilization.

The agenda has become broader and more complex, but then I think the world is also able to deal with more complex situations now than before because we have the fantastic development in communications. Access to information has become so much easier than 10 or 12 years ago. So where there is good leadership, clear ideas, we can do many more things today more easily than we could do 10 years ago. So while the agenda becomes more complex, the world's capacity to deal with this agenda is also bigger.

SGIQ: What role can civil society organizations and ordinary citizens play?

KCG: One other difference between 1990 and now is that we have had the evolution of civil society organizations and civil society activism in unprecedented ways. In the past we used to generally look to governments to solve many problems. No longer. Great achievements in the movement for children have come, not necessarily through government actions, but through the actions of civil society organizations.

Take for example the movement to ban land mines--that was a civil society movement. Similarly, debt relief: Jubilee 2000 was a group of civil society organizations that mobilized to seek debt relief for the poorest countries. Without the activism of civil society that would not have happened.

Some of the big plans and big ideas that we have for children depend on civil society activism and their monitoring for success. Governments need to be prodded and supported, sometimes criticized, sometimes cajoled, sometimes encouraged by civil society so that the promises that the leaders make will be kept.

SGIQ: What can individuals do to help make the world truly "fit for children"?

KCG: If the world is going to be truly fit for children, it is going to require action not just by governments and by organizations, but by families and communities and individuals, and there are a variety of ways in which we can help. One is by being a role model in our own families and communities to make sure that everything we do is child-friendly, that it has a positive impact on children. Test your actions, your legislation, your local committee's decisions in terms of whether they will benefit children or hurt them.

We can also popularize agreements like the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the "World Fit For Children" document. Let us disseminate these in our societies, and let people know that there are simple things that every one of us can do. Individuals can do a lot. Individuals can hold their local community leaders accountable. Have dialogue with them. Ask your leaders; ask your members of parliament: when they vote for budgets, are they increasing the budgets for health, education, sanitation, nutrition and child protection activities? Citizen pressure on political leaders can be very effective.

Citizens can also influence private sector companies when they have employment policies or environmental policies; let them be child-friendly and protecting of children's rights.

In the case of donor countries, it is very important to emphasize that when industrialized countries offer external assistance, their citizens should be asking for an increase in assistance because the world invests far too little in development cooperation. But within overall development cooperation, citizens should be asking governments to give a much higher priority to children and child-related investments, because those are the kind of investment ordinary citizens can appreciate and support.

In many donor countries people are afraid that foreign aid will go to support corrupt governments. Corrupt governments usually waste resources in huge projects that involve big contractors. Of course, big infrastructure development projects are also needed for national development, but there is a greater chance for waste and corruption in such projects. But on activities like polio eradication, primary education, drinking water supply, there is less chance for funds being misused. Citizens should be vigilant and ask their governments to make sure that a greater proportion of their aid and support goes to these priority basic social services.

People in the world are sometimes very cynical about development aid and its effectiveness, saying there is a lot of corruption and not many good things happen. But look to children and the progress that is being made for children. In the last decade the progress has been remarkable. There are very simple, low-cost, practical ideas, and I feel all of us who work for children and in the interests of children should be a bit more optimistic and positive. The Special Session has given us an agenda which is full of actionable plans, so I would hope that we can all look to the future with some optimism and the feeling that if we organize ourselves, if we mobilize solidarity for children, we can truly change the world for children.

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