There is no greater loss for any family anywhere than when a small child dies. There was no greater advocate for small children than Jim Grant. His tenure at UNICEF saved millions of children around the world. One of his dreams was universal childhood immunization. People thought it was impossible until it was achieved. Grant had other dreams most of them equally impossible. He envisioned a summit of world leaders devoted exclusively to children. Jim Grant will also be remembered in history as a man who helped make the world a better place. He did it by leading a world wide revolution, an all out war in the name of children. To help others help themselves is very, very satisfactory.
September 1990 more than 150 nations gathered for the largest summit in history. On the agenda just one item. Taking action to improve the well being of children. The world summit and the Congress it brought about were partly the result of one man's ability to mobilize world leaders on every continent. It is within the power of those gathered here to make this summit into a turning point not only for the world's children but truly for us all. And it was a turning point. The summit set specific goals to improve the lives of children and individual nations established plans of action to meet those goals. It was the first truly global summit held on any subject in world history. It did this incredible job of setting goals for the year 2000. Doable goals that would dramatically change the condition of children.
That same year, 1990, two other events had wide reaching effects on children everywhere. Countries around the world began to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights document of historic proportion. For the first time it created a legal umbrella, a bill of rights for children. The other historic event, universal child immunization.
Five years early when just one in five children were being immunized UNICEF and the World Health Organization set a goal. Full immunization for 80 % of children in the developing world. In 1990 the goal was reached. If you fly and could see these little villages and realize that everyone in everyone of these villages children will have five to six contacts with the health system to get immunized each year, it is truly remarkable and this is the latest scientific technology reaching practically every family in the world. Three milestones - The World Summit for Children, The Convention on the Rights of the Child, Universal Child Immunization - all resulted from Jim Grant's vision and commitment to humanity.
A commitment that began sixty years earlier in China. His father pioneered China's public health service and his grandfather was a missionary. Jim learned early about human suffering. I can well remember as a boy people dying in the streets and everybody would just walk around those people who would starve to death. That inspired Jim Grant's life long desire to stimulate development and alleviate world hunger. After serving in Burma and China during the second world war he undertook a series of senior development positions throughout Asia. Grant helped engineer the green revolution in Turkey and founded the Overseas Development Council. All the while he saw what was happening to children.
Jim Grant called it a silent emergency and refused to be silent. If one looks back, basically children were the most disadvantaged group in the world community and it was made by the fact that more than 75,000 children died each day of largely preventable causes, 75,000 children each day, every two days a Hiroshima of children. Jim Grant got his chance to help change those statistics on January 1, 1980 he was sworn in as executive director of UNICEF. It was the first day of a new decade and the first day of a new career devoted to saving lives. What we see on the horizon is an opportunity for a child health revolution in the next decade, decade and a half, that is very comparable in scale to what the green revolution was for grain production in agriculture in Asia in the late 60's and 70's.
Those were the first shots in a global war on disease and death which he called the child survival revolution and it was a revolution. Focusing on inexpensive technologies that could save tens of millions of lives. There was a world wide emphasis on breast feeding, immunization against childhood diseases, growth monitoring to measure progress and oral rehydration therapy that could potentially save millions of children's from death brought on by diarrhea and dehydration. Jim Grant was never without a packet of the salts which he regarded as nothing short of a miracle. Cost less then 10 cents, it contains the salt, potassium, and glucose which you mix with a litre of water and make this magic, really, truly magic cure. The child survival revolution was an immediate success. It saved 25 million lives and continues to save 4 million more lives each year. But Jim Grant always believed that children deserved more than to merely survive so he mobilized a force on entirely new concepts, basic human rights for children. Those include the right to a decent education, equality for girls and the right to be protected in time of war. I'm told there were 43 people killed in this particular ruckus. I'm looking for the day when we no longer need these. Jim Grant traveled to war zones around the world calling for days of tranquillity for the benefit of the children. It is just intolerable that children today be the principle victim of conflicts between their elders for which these children have not had any part. The rights were spelled out in the convention on the rights of the child. It became the most widely accepted human rights document in history. It's the right to live in two senses. It's the right to be alive, but it also covers the right to be alive with education, with health, with family relationships. That's what it covers, the right to be alive, and the right to be alive, truly alive.
Near the end of his career Jim Grant could look out on a world that was substantially better for children. The improvement was due partly to work done by UNICEF and other organizations. Partly to geopolitics and the sweeping tide of global democracy. When I was born, when I was a youth it was still a world of empires. We were subjects. Today the view is that the purpose of society is to help people. But even as the world's poorest nations continue to improve Jim Grant witnessed a decline in his own country. Even in Subsahara Africa. The situation of children in Subsahara in Africa is substantially better today than it was in 1980 despite debt burdens, civil wars and everything else. The situation of children in the United States today is worse overall, particularly children at the bottom third than it was in 1980. That is what I would say is in America. As the Executive Director of UNICEF it has been my greatest disappointment. One of Jim Grant's wishes was that the United States ratify the Convention. Finally after his death the US did sign. It was a tribute to Jim Grant as his wife Ellen looked on.
In the last years of his life Grant was awarded the presidential medal and received honors around the world. I've been called a lot of things but not an angel. It was global recognition that the child survival revolution was an unqualified success. Up until his final day Jim Grant continued to celebrate life. At the same time he remained haunted by death. Probably the greatest single global obscenity at this time is the fact that 13 million children die, two thirds of whom could be readily preventable. When you know how to relieve torment and don't then in a sense you join the tormentors.
As head of UNICEF, Grant spend fifteen years trying to relieve torment. He met frequently with world leaders and enlisted them in the revolution. He helped establish specific measurable goals for social development. Goals that have been achieved in countries around the world. Above all else he helped give children their rightful place on the global political agenda. The early success of the organization has been to help to crystallize this transformation and condition global attitudes to our children and UNICEF has been part of the yeast of this historic change. So much of it has come during the period that I have been executive director of UNICEF. It's a coincidence of timing, but to actually see these global changes is very satisfying.
The global changes are anything but a coincidence. They're the result of Jim Grant's endless devotion to humanity and especially children. He started a revolution by inspiring people from around the world, everyone from national leaders to ordinary citizens. It's up to them and each of us to continue Jim Grant's revolution in the name of children.