TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE BY DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL, GENERAL ASSEMBLY

PRESIDENT, HEAD OF UNICEF AT UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, 11 DECEMBER 2007

Mr. Kerim (President of the General Assembly):  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  Once again, we are facing a brutal terrorist attack on one of the Member States of the United Nations -- in this case, Algeria.  I would like to start by saying a few words about that, and then I will turn to the event which actually was the reason why we convened this press conference.

I just issued a statement condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the terrorist bomb attacks in Algeria.  I both expressed my outrage over the lost of life, as well as my deepest condolences to the families of the victims of this cowardly attack and act, and to the President and the Government of Algeria.

Let me reiterate that terrorism is unacceptable in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whoever, wherever and for whatever purposes.  The fact that, once again, United Nations offices and staff were deliberate targets of terrorist attacks demonstrates that terrorism is a continuous and global challenge that knows no boundaries.

The brutal criminal acts of today should further underscore the determination recently demonstrated by Member States here when, in early December, we had a General Assembly meeting on countering terrorism, to advance vigorously on the implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy that was adopted by the General Assembly.

Allow me now to say a few words concerning the commemorative meeting on children.  First of all, I would like to stress the fact that we have a more than impressive level of participation, which indicates the importance Member States attach to this event:  over 140 Member States have indicated their desire to address this meeting.  And it is the record this year for the General Assembly, apart from the general debate, where, by definition, all the Member States attend and participate.

This strong level of interest underscores the significance of the issue.  The commitments made five years ago cut to the heart of the work of the General Assembly. The key priorities of this Assembly session -- responding to climate change, financing for development, achieving the Millennium Development Goals -- are closely tied to the aims contained in “A world fit for children”.

In the declaration we plan to adopt, there are a few points which I would like to highlight for you.

We renew, first of all, our political will to intensify our efforts towards building a world fit for children, and we reaffirm our commitment to fully implement the commitments made in that document.

We give high priority to the rights of children, to their survival and to their protection and development.  By doing this, we will serve the best interests of all humanity.

We call for a cross-sectoral response by Governments, with increased international cooperation and with broader and more focused partnerships involving the mass media and the private sector, as that is critical to achieve the goals of the 2002 special session.

Let me also note that there are encouraging developments, and progress has been achieved since 2002 in creating a world fit for children.  Fewer children under 5 years are dying each year.  More children are in school than ever before.  More educational opportunities are being equally extended to girls and boys.  More medicines are available for children, including those infected by HIV/AIDS.  More laws, policies and plans are in place to protect children from violence, abuse and exploitation.  And I believe my distinguished colleague, the Executive Director of UNICEF, will tell you more details and facts which underscore the progress made.

But many challenges still remain.  Many things have to be done.  So, we are on the right path, but we have still a long way to go.  Malnutrition, pandemics, including HIV/AIDS, as well as malaria, tuberculosis and other preventable diseases, continue to be a hindrance to a healthy life for millions of children.  Lack of access to education remains a significant obstacle to their development.  A large number of children are still subject to violence, exploitation and abuse, as well as to inequity and discrimination, in particular, against the girl child.  And, as you know, human trafficking also includes, unfortunately, children.

So our plate still remains full.  It is for this reason that we need to renew our commitment made five years ago.

The Deputy Secretary-General:  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  Allow me also first to add my voice to that of the Secretary-General and my colleagues in condemning in the strongest terms possible the terrorist attacks in Algiers today.  I express my sincere condolences to the Government and people of Algeria, and to the families of the United Nations staff and local population who were victims of this senseless and barbaric attack.

In May 2002, Governments committed to a set of time-bound and specific goals, targets, strategies and actions in four priority areas for the rights and well-being of children:  promoting healthy lives; providing quality education; protecting against abuse, exploitation and violence; and combating HIV/AIDS.

The report of the Secretary-General on children and the Millennium Development Goals provides new information on how far we have come in making a world fit for children.  The report shows that results are mixed.  Positive progress has been made in the last five years, since the special session, but more actions are needed everywhere to reach the goals that were agreed.

There are, for example, important successes with child survival.  We note, for instance, under-5 mortality has come down in all regions, and most countries are on track to meet the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG).  Some middle-income countries have made rapid progress in reducing maternal deaths.  The number of countries that have achieved universal primary completion is on the increase, and many more education systems are recognizing the importance of the education of girls.  And several countries have made remarkable progress in integrating children with disabilities into mainstream schools.  A number of countries are also on track to increase services related to prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, to cover 80 per cent of HIV-infected pregnant women by 2010.

Yet, more work remains to be done by all actors if we are to meet all the targets that have been set.  That is, the overall rate of decline in under-5 mortality is too slow for developing countries as a group to meet the MDG target.  In 23 countries, the trend has either stagnated or worsened.  Maternal mortality levels remain unacceptably high across the developing world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Globally, over 90 million children are still out of school, based on enrolment and attendance data.  Around 90 per cent of children with disabilities in developing countries do not attend school.  And despite overall high enrolment ratios in many countries, severe problems remain of gender disparity.  More than 125 million children under 5 live in households using unimproved sources of drinking water.  Antiretroviral coverage for children is still significantly lower than for the general population.  Children all over the world remain subject to sexual, physical and other forms of abuse, including those perpetrated by the adults who should be their protectors.

If we are to have any chance of meeting these critical goals, we must invest in every child, in every community, everywhere -- to give each child a healthy start in life, a good basic education, protection from exploitation, and a chance to develop to his or her full capacity.

Ms. Veneman (Executive Director, UNICEF):  I also join the Secretary-General in expressing our own shock and outrage at what happened today in Algiers, and our thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were injured.  I can report that, as was indicated, UNICEF does have an office in Algiers which is about a mile away from the United Nations offices.  It is undamaged, and all UNICEF staff are accounted for and are safe.  We are looking for a complete count, but we have between 20 and 30 UNICEF employees, both nationals and internationals, in Algeria.

The President of the General Assembly has given you a briefing on the special session.  The Deputy Secretary-General has outlined some of the important numbers that have come out in both of these reports that have been presented.  One is the “Progress for Children”, which we released yesterday and is a report of UNICEF; the other one is the Secretary-General’s report, which was released as part of this conference.

I thought I would highlight some of the other special events that are going on around this special session that might be of special interest to you.  First of all, for those of you who saw the discussions this morning, you saw that one of the young people spoke, very eloquently I think:  a young boy from Namibia.  We have over 90 children and young people who are participating in a parallel youth forum.  They’ve been here since Saturday.  They range in age from 11 years to 17 years, and they’ve come to New York from 51 different countries to participate.  On the final day, they will present their own outcome document to the General Assembly that they’ve been working on as a youth group.

On Sunday, some of these youth participants spoke via satellite to members of the Elders Group, who were gathered again in Capetown in South Africa.  As you know, the Elders includes a number of people, including Nelson Mandela, Graça Michel, Desmond Tutu and former Irish President Mary Robinson.  And they joined really to launch the beginning of the sixtieth year of the Declaration of the Human Rights, and that is something the Elders Group is working on for this next year.

We also have a total of 300 representatives from 120 non-governmental organizations from around the world at this meeting.  They are either part of the formal round tables or they are engaged in a variety of side events on a wide range of topics.  These include improving ethics education, to the impact of global climate change on children, and a whole range of other issues.  You can find a comprehensive list of these events at UNICEF’s website under the “World Fit for Children + 5” icon.

Among the activities that UNICEF has undertaken in support of the special session is the production of the report I mentioned earlier, called “Progress for Children:  A World Fit for Children Statistical Review”, and it is the source of the data in the Secretary-General’s report and an excellent reference tool, showing the kind of progress that has already been discussed.  And it really indicates, I think, where we can use data to determine where efforts should be scaled up, where more needs to be done.  To make progress, we need to know what delivers results, and, of course, as I said earlier, we need to maintain a collective sense of urgency about achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

So, we are hopeful that this special session and the side events that are taking place around it will serve to renew that sense of urgency.

Question:  On behalf of the United Nations Correspondents Association, thanks to all of you for making time to give us this briefing and take questions.  I’ll ask this question, which may seem on or off topic.  One of the -- first of all, the two reports seem -- if you could somehow contrast, as we try to report on them, sort of how they’re different.  I’m looking at the +5 report which seems also is targeted to the MDGs.  But on a specific topic, I wondered -- there’s a lot of news about this whole One Laptop per Child initiative that’s been proposed.  And I know there was -- UNESCO came here and we asked them if they have a sort of position on it.  How do you see, given the MDG about increasing access to education -- I’m looking at the report, where at least several sub-Saharan African countries less than 50 per cent of kids are in school.  How do you see the One Laptop per Child project and whether the United Nations should, could or is working with it?

Ms. Veneman:  Let me take that, because UNICEF has been working with the One Laptop per Child group.  Let me first answer your question on the two reports.  This report, “Progress for Children”, is the one that UNICEF put together to really review many of the Millennium Development Goals and the kinds of things that are targets.  So, I announced in September, for example, that we saw child mortality fall below the 10 million mark, to 9.7 million.  Many of the things that are in the statistical analysis are those things that really tie into why it’s dropping:  increase in use of bed nets, measles mortality coming down significantly -- we made an announcement on that recently -- more immunizations, more clean water and so forth.

And so, as we see the various interventions increase, you also see the child mortality falling accordingly.  On the education issues, we are concerned that many countries still have very low rates of primary education.  The One Laptop per Child:  we have been working with them; we have been using it as a source right now, primarily, for youth interaction and, in fact, we have a booth set up at UNICEF during the Youth Engagement where the One Laptop is being used as a technology to let these young people that are here actually go in and record their own stories.  Those are going onto a website so that other youth, around the world, can access them.

We are also working with various wiki technologies to interlink children around the world.  And we use the One Laptops for the J-8, the young people who were involved in the G-8 Summit this year in Germany:  we used those, along with the wiki technologies, to interlink the youth who were involved, so that when they got to Germany, they knew each other already.  So, it was quite successful.  We’ve been using a number of these technologies.

As far as putting One Laptop in countries in education settings, that’s being piloted in a number of countries.  I don’t know exactly which countries those are, but I know there are some countries in which we are -- which they are piloting, putting them into specific schools.

Question:  I just wanted to ask one question of the Deputy Secretary-General and one of (inaudible).  One question for the Deputy Secretary-General:  there have been reports that the children are weighing in on this climate change issue.  What I want to find out is how much do children know about climate change, or are they just being (inaudible) used as the angle to promote the climate change agenda?  Because some people are saying that.  That’s one thing.  And then this:  you have said on the Progress report that there are certain -- a lot of things that are not achieved.  I just want to know, in the case of, say, underdeveloped countries, as against countries (inaudible), what kind of -- in the figure it said that 41 per cent of the world population, 2.6 billion people, did not improve sanitation.  And this is basically all people, not children alone.  But in South Asia -- I just wanted to know in South Asia, what is the progress being made by UNICEF on the children?

The Deputy Secretary-General:  The first one was about children, not only --

Question:  Children, yes, on climate change.  They are weighing in on climate change, is the report:  that children come and speak about climate change and how important it is.  The only thing is there are some people saying that children are being used; they don’t really understand what climate change is all about.  Is that right?

The Deputy Secretary-General:  Issues of climate change are of critical importance.  We all know that.  They are important not only in terms of knowing what climate change is about, but also the impact.  And in a number of countries, particularly in countries from the developing world, children tend to be more vulnerable because of the situation of underdevelopment generally.  So, the children do know about climate change.  They live through the impact of climate change, and I think what is important is to take them on board in planning, particularly for the future -- the future belongs to them.  And they should be part of the processes that are put in place to ensure that they know exactly what climate change involves, that they appreciate their actions on climate change.  I think this is where the importance lies, much as they may know or they may be part of the victims of climate change.  I think this is a collective responsibility.

And you will appreciate that the presence of the Secretary-General in Bali, the involvement of the United Nations, would go in that direction.  We have all arms of the United Nations dealing with climate change, and I believe my colleague, Ms. Veneman, may wish to give us the proper perspective in the context of what UNICEF is doing in that area as well.

Question:  Ms. Veneman, I just want to rephrase that thing.  I just want to know a figure:  exactly the amount that UNICEF is spending in the developing world -- South Asia, Asia and Africa -- and the amount it is spending elsewhere -- the money.  Do you have a figure?

Ms. Veneman:  We can try to get you those figures later, but let me just comment quickly.  Most of our resources do obviously go to the developing world, and I think it is very important.  We spend about 50 per cent of our resources in Africa.  We spend about 50 per cent of our resources on health generally -- not the same 50 per cent, but obviously there is a lot of overlap.

Let me just say a couple of words about the climate change issue that you raised, because in addition to the children’s forum that we are conducting here, we also have another team in Bali with a children’s forum there that is contributing to the discussion.  So climate change has been raised among the children’s forum here in New York, but there is also a specific children’s forum in Bali as part of the discussions.  Some of the heads of State will be able to interact with these young people, and so forth.  We are also issuing a report on children and climate change tomorrow.  This will be used in conjunction with the Bali Conference, and we can get you that.

On the issue of sanitation, sanitation is obviously a very important health issue.  It impacts children, children’s health, child mortality.  And as you know, just a few weeks ago, we launched the International Year of Sanitation with the Secretary-General.  We hope to bring additional focus to this issue because it is so important to the health of people around the world, especially children.

Again, on South Asia and progress for children, we do have specific problems in South Asia.  Certainly, the issue of under-nutrition is one.  We see under-nutrition rates in India, for example, where 43 per cent of under-5s are underweight.  In some of the other Asian countries -- Nepal, Bangladesh -- the rates are still at 47-48 per cent.  That’s very, very high.  On average, under-5 underweight is 28 per cent in Africa.  So that’s one issue.

We also, about two weeks ago, released the information on measles mortality showing that, in Africa, we’ve already reached the 2010 goal of reducing measles deaths by 90 per cent.  Where the gaps really still are is in Asia, but especially in India, and so we are going to focus on measles immunizations, particularly in the north of India, where the real gaps really are.

One of the things that we have tried to point out so strongly is that having this kind of data and these kinds of statistics really allows us to target resources where they are needed most, because you have to know what is happening in these countries so you can target your resources.

Question:  The Secretary-General has repeatedly talked about South-South cooperation.  Particularly, he has referred to the alleviation of malaria for children under 5.  Could you give any specific examples of South-South cooperation that is helping towards this situation, particularly in the least developed countries?

Ms. Veneman:  As you know, we’re having some forums on that next week here at the United Nations, where we will be discussing those in greater detail.  But we have some very good examples of South-South cooperation, for example, in Brazil helping other countries with addressing the issue of HIV and AIDS.  I was in Viet Nam recently.   Viet Nam is helping West Africa with rice growing.  Many countries -- Cuba is a good example -- send medical practitioners around the world.  So I think we have some very good examples of South-South cooperation, and again, next week we will be discussing those in much greater detail.

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