Our children: The divide between promise and progress.

• Position: Statistical Data Included

The good news since the 1990 Children's Summit

* A one-third cut in mortality among children under the age of five was achieved over the last ten years by 63 countries.

* Deaths of young children from diarrhoeal diseases were cut in half, saving as many as 1 million lives.

* There were 3,000,000 fewer child deaths per year at the end of the decade than at the beginning.

* There has been a 99-per-cent reduction in the number of reported polio cases in the world.

* More children than ever before are now in school, one result being a rise in the adult literacy rate, from 75 per cent in 1990 to 79 per cent last year.

* An estimated 90,000,000 newborns are protected every year from iodine deficiency, the major cause of mental retardation.

* Moreover, thanks to the heightened awareness of child rights stirred by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been and Progress almost universally ratified, egregious violations of children's rights are being more systematically exposed, and action is being taken to overcome them. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the mass media are also playing an increasingly active role in drawing public attention to the need for children to be protected. Clearly, they now have a much higher profile on the national and global political agendas. The Security Council itself has taken up their issues, particularly that of children and armed conflict.

The not-so-good news since the 1990 Children's Summit

* More than 10,000,000 children under the age of five still die each year, mostly from readily preventable causes.

* Conflicts killed 2,000,000 children in the past decade and left many other millions psychologically traumatized, disabled and even mutilated.

* An estimated 30,000,000 children are now victimized by traffickers, who almost invariably go unpunished.

* An estimated 150,000,000 children are malnourished.

* One in three fail to complete five years of basic schooling.

* Over 100,000,000 are still out of school, 60 per cent of them girls.

* Some 600,000,000 children live in absolute poverty, struggling to survive on $1 a day.

* Over 300,000 children have been recruited as participants in recent armed conflicts.

* Over 60,000,000 work in the worst forms of child labour.

Since the historic World Summit for Children in 1990, the reality is that while the world has achieved significant progress in meeting the goals established for helping children, setbacks along the way continue to pose a threat to...