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London, 26 February 2001

THE SECRETARY-GENERAL

VIDEO MESSAGE TO CONFERENCE ON "CHILD POVERTY - REACHING THE 2015 TARGETS"

My dear friends,

Imagine for a moment what it is like to be a child growing up in a poor country.

The chances are, you have neither enough to eat, nor safe drinking water.  Almost certainly, you have neither electricity nor a telephone in your home. 

You have at best an even chance of living till you are fifty.  Long before that, you may be orphaned by HIV/AIDS or some other infectious disease, for which your family cannot afford treatment.

And instead of going to school you may be on the street, or working long hours in unsafe conditions, or kept at home - especially if you are a girl.

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Yet your government can seem very distant and often, instead of spending money on health and education, it has to use its meagre tax revenue to pay creditors in much richer countries.

Last year, leaders of all the world's governments - rich and poor alike - came together at the United Nations and resolved that this had to change.  In the Millennium Declaration, they adopted a set of clear targets for reducing poverty, ignorance and disease in the world by 2015.

In a minute my colleagues Carol Bellamy and Mark Malloch Brown will tell you what the United Nations is doing to help people in poor countries, and especially to help children - girls as well as boys - get at least a basic education.

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But that is only part of the effort that all of us have to make - governments, international organisations, private companies, voluntary groups, and poor people themselves - if all the targets are to be reached.

This has to happen, not just in the world as a whole, but in every country.  The people of each country must agree on what needs to be done. Already, United Nations country teams are working to help them do that.

At the global level, leaders look to the United Nations as the forum where they can co-ordinate their efforts, and as a monitor to tell them how they are doing.  In September, I shall submit a "road map", sketching out what needs to be done to reach the targets; and from next year we will draw up annual reports, to assess what has been achieved and what more needs to be done.

Your meeting today can help greatly, by making it clearer whose job it is to do what.  I warmly applaud my friends Gordon Brown and Clare Short for convening it.  And I look forward to working with all of you, to give the world's children the chance of a better future.  

Thank you very much.

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