Good Morning. Thank you. Ministers, friends, allies for children. During the video so many memories were brought back of dear Jim as friend, as leader, as inspirer. I couldn't help thinking how happy Jim would be looking down on us as the friendly angel that Joe Clark has referred to. And asking us what will be our commitment that we reach by the end of this meeting. I'm sure he will also be saying as he said at the end of the 1992 meeting The grand alliance for children is alive and well and I think he would be saying and it's growing.
When he came back from 1992 meeting he felt that we all had a debt of gratitude to pay to Dr. Wah Jun Tze, The Child Health Society and the local governments of Canada and I'm sure he would want us to repeat this thank you today and our encouragement that this good work continue.
I am very pleased to bring to you all greetings, warm and supportive greetings from UNICEF's new and executive director Carol Bellamy who took office just one month ago on May 1. She wishes this meeting every success. Last week at the executive board she promised that she would follow in Jim Grant's footsteps. Those footsteps she said will continue to lead UNICEF in the right direction to the year 2000 and beyond.
What does it mean to follow in Jim Grant's footsteps? I think five things.
First it means reaching for the moon, the sun and the stars. It means don't settle for the cautious, the limited, the business as usual. Reach for the impossible and make it happen.
Second it means keeping human beings at the center. Starting with children. Economics must serve human ends not dominate them. Investing in people, children first and foremost is the way to build our collective future.
Third it means setting clear goals. Without clear goals the greatest long run vision will never be achieved. We need ambitious but achievable goals for the immediate phase ahead, the next five to ten years. Accountability, a word of the day requires there to be time bound goals.
Fourth it means mobilizing all. The opportunities and challenges we face on the threshold of the twenty-first century are immense and everyone great and small has a role to play in making this world a better place. And in this era progressive change is increasingly driven from below, by communities, by individuals, by what is called civil society, by what the United Nations referred to as "we the people". In the 50th Anniversary year of the UN we need to realize that we the people are a reality and make this a reality of our working.
The fifth and finally Jim's vision means bringing it down to the specifics, not just the goals but the specifics of what to do. It said, "God is in the details, Jim Grant is in the details." Jim Grant concentrated on the specifics. Shortly before Jim died, about three weeks before, I asked Jim where did he get his vision from, his sense of commitment. He said from his father. He said from two particular teachers. One in secondary school, one in university. I pressed him, was it books he had read? No. Family? No. These two teachers. Of course later he built on that from experience. But I would like to say, all of us who have links with teachers, all of us who have links with children as parents or as uncles or aunts, let's remember the inspiration and commitment is usually laid in the early years. Later many of us are lucky enough to have a chance to give bent to it, to help push these things along but the first commitments and first visions and first optimisms are laid down early.
Let me look quickly at three places where I think we need to devote action in the years ahead. First in those developing countries where progress for children has accelerated in recent years. We need to be encouraged by this progress. We need to throw out that pessimism that is often misinformed when we see the progress that Dr. Nakajima has just demonstrated we need to be inspired of the possibilities of more. The games have been very impressive worldwide. The tragedies of Somalia, of Rwanda of many countries in Africa, Afghanistan. They are real, but they are not the generality. We need to be inspired by the more than 100 countries worldwide that are making significant progress towards the achievement of the goals set at the 1990 World Summit for Children. Indeed as you will see in that excellent newspaper, Jim Grant's own phrase which he formed about last November, December, looking at the record. Most countries are likely to achieve most of the mid decade goals set for 1995. We need to build on that and in particular we need now to go beyond child survival to focus on child development and to focus on child protection. With know how and systems in place to give each child the basics of a healthy start in life. We must increasingly work on the next steps. Insuring education for those still outside and raising the quality and relevance for all. Insuring that girls in particular get brought into the school system and encouraged and enabled and empowered to fulfill the basic education and indeed to go beyond.
We need to concentrate on guaranteeing the broad range of child rights enshrined in the convention on the rights of the child. We need to inculcate in young people an ethos of responsibility, participation and solidarity in the global village. They will be the next generation. If we provide the right support in the right way, co-operation with this category of developing countries will move rapidly in the direction of sustainability and self help. I have only touched on a few of the goals there. May I commend to you all to look at the goals as set out in the exhibition at the back of this hall. They set out under each for the year 2000 more of the details, more of the specifics and then if you need an inspiration go to that corner where the photographs of Jim over the last year or two, many taken by Ellen Grant you will find exhibited.
Those are the countries, those are the areas where much is working well, where the issue is how to accelerate and take things further forward.
The second set of challenges can be found in the poorest and least developed countries. Particularly Subsahara in Africa. Here there has also been much good for children but as has already been brought out often economic and social progress has generally not been able to keep pace with high population growths or hold its own in the face of economic disaster and often combined with armed conflict, often leading and resulting from environmental degradation. Half the people in Subsahara in Africa will be living in absolute poverty by the year 2000. The 47 least developed countries have 10% of the world's population but only one tenth of one percent of the world's income. A child born in these countries is more likely to die before the age of five than to complete primary school.
What we need in these countries is international co-operation to encourage and enable them to continue with the goals and indeed go beyond them. The challenge is to put a bubble of protection around their first fragile months and years of the children in these countries. Employing the tried and true, the low cost but high impact interventions in our tool kit. Immunization, oral rehydration, breast feeding, growth monitoring, Vitamin A, iodization of salt amongst others. In spite of their poverty many of these countries have shown that it is possible to make impressive progress in these priority areas for children. But the task is not completed. Sometimes there has been slippage back after the progress in 1990 but in all cases particularly in education, additional support and I'll come back to this, additional support is needed if these countries are to enter the 21st century with their children prepared for the tasks and opportunities of that time.
Let me say resources are vital but our experience in UNICEF even in these countries ultimately its political will, effective strategies and clear priorities that matter most. Third and finally let me talk about the challenges we face in the industrialized countries. Along with the widening gap between rich and poor and the growth of unemployment in many industrial countries there has been a rapid and alarming fraying of the social fabric in a number of them. Whether they are suffering rising poverty, abuse or neglect, children and young people in the industrial world are paying a frighteningly high price. One out of five American children are now living in poverty and I'm told that fifty NGO's in Canada made the same point in respect to Canada.
We must support our children at home as part of our commitment to children worldwide. I think one of the reasons for the pessimism that many of us in industrial countries sometimes feel is by looking at the neglect we are allowing to happen to children in our own countries and somehow think that is inevitable, rather than to recognize that frankly this is a failure and often it is a setback indeed since 1980 or indeed since 1990. We must establish protective social safety nets for children. We must realize that the market must not be allowed to hold sway regardless. Of course there is a new political mood but that new political mood does not mean that the public wants neglect of its children. We have got to find a new way to provide those essential supports for children in industrial countries because there are for many people in the industrial countries the children nearest at home and because that is part of the political condition for responding to the needs of children world wide.
Let me refer finally to a second summit. The world summit for social development that took place in Copenhagen last March. The Copenhagen summit re-endorsed the goals for Children of the World Summit for children of 1990. But it said in addition, action to tackle poverty world wide was also needed and was possible. It said these plans, plans of action for poverty eradication should be prepared by the year 1996 if possible. These plans should establish within each national context, it said and I'm quoting, "strategies and affordable time bound goals and targets for the substantial reduction of overall poverty and the eradication of absolute poverty". We in UNICEF believe that the worst aspects of poverty, including child poverty world wide could be cut in half in the next ten years. It means going forward with the goals for the Year 2000 for children and it also means developing parallel action to insure that the worst aspects of poverty, the lack of food, the lack of income, the lack of support for women is also dealt with in each country in appropriate ways.
We feel in UNICEF that five critical actions are need in this area of poverty, each echoing lines of action that Jim Grant taught us were relevant and were feasible and were effective with respect to the goals for the Year 2000 in the areas of health, education, nutrition and water. One clear setting of goals for halving poverty country by country. Second programs of action need to be prepared to turn goals into practical action and practical action into results achieved. A 100 countries have prepared national programs of action for the world summit for children goals. We need now to see something added in these other areas of poverty to ensure the parallel action that the world summit in Copenhagen talked on. Thirdly people must be energized and mobilized. We need a grand alliance for children as Jim Grant called for and as Jim Grant helped to set in motion. Actually we now need alliances. Alliances of committed people and groups at community level, town level, municipal level, district, regional and national level. And we need this also internationally. Fourth goals of poverty reduction must be monitored to be serious about implementation. Fifth and finally resources must be mobilized in order to support these actions nationally and internationally. Again as I said earlier in relation to what lessons we had learned from the goals for children. The goals for poverty reduction are not so much additional resources as clear priority in using the resources available. Clearer priorities, greater cost effectiveness and by better mobilization of the human and financial resources already available. UNICEF with WHO and other UN partners has called for the promotion of 20/20 as a reminder that all the resources required to reaching basic health for all, education for all, nutrition, water, sanitation for all would be available if only 20% of government budgets and 20% of aid budgets were mobilized for these purposes.
I want in conclusion to refer just to one particular area of need for that second group of challenges I referred to - the challenges in Africa and the least developed countries. These countries are at the moment paying out of their national budgets something like a third of their annual budgets each year in payment of debt. The Secretary General has referred to these payments of debts as a millstone around Africa's neck. We need action if we are going to see these countries, particularly in Africa be able to shift their priorities in favor of basic health, education and poverty reduction. And I quote from what UNICEF's executive board said last week, "This executive board urges donor countries and international financial institutions to consider all possible measures to reduce the official debt burden of African countries, including debt cancellation and debt conversions and further calls upon the executive director to advocate at the highest possible levels for the reduction of African bilateral and multilateral debt".
In less than two weeks time leaders of the G7 industrial countries will be meeting in Halifax. The single most important economic initiative which the G7 could take today to help children throughout Subsahara in Africa would be a clear decision at the summit to forgive, cancel or greatly reduce Africa's debt, national and international and to leave the resources saved to providing health and education for Africa's children. This would help build up the resources needed to lay the foundation for true African revival in the twenty-first century. For the diamondism and vitality of the African children we saw dancing at the beginning to become the reality of the African continent and it would be a truly dramatic international example of putting children first. Thank you.