Special Session
The Special Session on Children was a meeting the UN General Assembly held May 8-10, 2002. It was held to review the progress made for children in the decade since the 1990 World Summit for Children. It also served as a method to renew the commitments made in 1990, and to make a pledge for specific actions for the coming decade. In total about 70 Heads of State and/or Government attended the Session. Children from all around the world where invited to attend. They participated in numerous supporting events. One of the more important events was the Celebration of Leadership for Children held on May 9th. The event encompassed a sense of unity and created a festive nature for the Session, but the real reason for the gathering was not forgotten.
The World Summit stands out from any other United Nations gathering because of its soundly set goals and its systematic follow up procedure. The Secretary-General’s report on children, titled "We the Children" uses data taken from 135 countries and is based on reviews conducted at the national level. It was the most comprehensive study of what was happening to the world’s children at that time. "We the Children" is a statistical representation of the minimal progress made in the decade. The report states, “The world has fallen short of achieving most of the goals of the World Summit for Children". Few of the goals established could be labeled as successes, others showed progress, but the majority were not met.
Read more about this topic: World Summit For Children
Famous quotes containing the words special and/or session:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)