Traditional indicators provide some heartening numbers.
More infants live to see adolescence and adulthood, and more children are getting educated than ever before. Some 80 per cent of children are immunized against childhood diseases. Polio could be eradicated worldwide in five years. But in emergency arenas dominated by conflict or ongoing economic and environmental turmoil, other numbers are dismal. More than 300,000 children are on the frontlines of history's bloodiest civil wars.