UNICEF pushes efforts to cut child deaths, hunger.

• Position: United Nations Children's Fund

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has made a "promise to children"--to try to end child deaths and child malnutrition on today's scale by the year 2000. The Fund estimates that a quarter of a million children die every week from common illnesses and one in three in the world are stunted by malnutrition.

That broad goal, declared on 30 September 1990 by 71 Presidents and Prime Ministers attending the first World Summit for Children, includes 20 specific targets detailed in the Plan of Action for implementing the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children in the 1990s, adopted at the Summit.

Among them are: one-third reduction in under-five death rates; halving maternal mortality rates; halving of severe and moderate malnutrition among the world's under-fives; safe water and sanitation for all families; and measures covering protection for women and girls, nutrition, child health and education.

Other goals include making family planning available to all couples and cutting deaths from diarrhoeal diseases--which kill approximately 4 million young children annually--by one half, and pneumonia--which kills another 4 million a year--by one third.

UNICEF Executive Director James P. Grant on 5 February told the Fund's Executive Board that 1990 had been "probably the most momentous year for children in history".

Ratification and promotion of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, unanimously adopted by the General Assembly on 20 November 1989, were urged by the world leaders at the Summit. As of 31 January 1991, 130 States had signed the Convention, which entered into force on 2 September 1990, and 71 countries had either ratified or acceded to it.

Ten members were elected to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. It is expected to hold its first session in mid-September to begin drawing up guidelines for use by States parties in the preparation of their reports on the condition of children.

Immunization saves

millions

The 128-page report--The State of the World's Children 1991--released on 19 December 1990, states that its 10-year effort to immunize 80 per cent of the developing world's children by the end of 1990--a rise from about 15 per cent in 1980--has added impetus to the idea of defining internationally-agreed targets.

Some 12 million young lives have been saved and 1.5 million children were prevented from being crippled by polio by the immunization campaign, the organization reports.

Richard...