The Plan of Action addressed reducing child and maternal mortality rates, preventable diseases, illiteracy and malnutrition. There was also an emphasis on the need for children s universal access to basic education, safe drinking water, healthy food, sanitary conditions and protection from abuse, violence and war. Since 1990, there has been progress. In 1999 alone, more than two thirds of the world s children under the age of five 470 million were immunized against polio. Some 12 million children are no longer at risk of mental disabilities because of an iodine deficient diet.
More children are in school today than at any other time in human history.
Children have formed their own parliaments and peace movements. Laws reflecting the Convention on the Rights of the Child have been enacted and enforced in many countries. And in 1997, the United Nations Secretary-General appointed the first ever Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict after a landmark report by Gra a Machel, a former Minister of Education in Mozambique and the UN special expert on children in armed conflict, documented the devastation children suffer in armed conflict. But the good news is tempered. The end-decade review of progress for children shows that there is still much work to be done.