Box 6.2 World Summit for Children: Declaration and Plan of Action

At the World Summit for Children, held in September 1990, the leaders of 71 countries committed themselves to taking high-level political action to assure the well-being of children (1). This commitment involves:

Ratifying and implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Promoting prenatal care and reductions in infant and child mortality.
Eradicating hunger, malnutrition, and famine.
Strengthening the role and status of women.
Supporting the role of the family, as well as support for children separated from their families.
Providing educational and training opportunities for children.
Addressing the plight of children in especially difficult circumstances--including victims of apartheid and foreign occupation; orphans; street children; migrant and refugee children; displaced children and victims of natural and man-made disasters; and disabled, abused, socially disadvantaged, and exploited children.
Protecting children from conflict.
Protecting the environment.
Alleviating poverty and revitalizing economic growth.

To achieve these broad goals, the Summit adopted a Plan of Action with a number of specific goals, many of wich had previously been endorsed in a variety of international settings:

Reduction of the 1990 under-five mortality rates by one third or to a level of 70 per 1,000 live births, whichever is the greater reduction.
Reduction of maternal mortality rates to half the 1990 levels.
Reduction of severe and moderate malnutrition among children under 5 to half the 1990 levels.
Universal access to safe drinking water and to sanitary means of excreta disposal.
Universal access to basic education, with at least 80 percent of primary-school-age children completing primary education.
Reduction of the adult illiteracy rate to at least half its 1990 level, with emphasis on improving female literacy.
Protection of children in especially difficult circumstances.

Toward these ends, some 25 specific goals were adopted that included increasing levels of child immunization at at least 90 percent, eradicating polio by 2000, eliminating neonatal tetanus by 1995, reducing measles deaths by 95 percent by 1995, reducing by one third the deaths due to acute respiratory infection, elimination of iodine deficiency disorder and vitamin A deficiency, and access by all couples to information and services to prevent pregnancies occuring too early, too late, too close, or too often.
References and Notes
1. The "World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children," and "Plan of Action for Implementing the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children," both adopted at the World Summit for Children, September 30, 1990, are reprinted in United Nations Children's Fund, The State of the World's Children 1991 (Oxford University Press, New York, 1991), pp. 51-74.