In every child who comes into the world, the hopes and dreams of the human race are born anew.
Children are the bearers of our common future a future that is in our hands as never before.
For the world has the knowledge, the resources and the legal imperatives to give every child the best possible start in life, in a family environment that offers the love, the care and the nurturing that children need to grow, to learn and to develop to the fullest. The entire community of nations acknowledged as much when they embraced the Convention on the Rights of the Child and vowed, a decade ago, to fulfil the goals of the World Summit for Children. These obligations must be met, not only by governments, but by all of us. Yet in this new millennium, it is clear that more much more must be done if the world is to protect the rights and meet the needs of all children. That is why we, as citizens of every nation and members of families, communities and civil society organizations of every kind, hereby resolve to help mobilize a Global Movement for Children an unstoppable crusade to end, at long last, the poverty, ill health, violence and discrimination that have needlessly blighted and destroyed so many young lives.