THE STATE OF THE WORLD'S CHILDREN 2004 - Unicef

In the Millennium Declaration of September
2000, Member States of the United Nations
made a most passionate commitment to
address the crippling poverty and multiplying
misery that grip many areas of the globe.
“We will spare no effort,” they affirmed,
“to free our fellow men, women and children
from the abject and dehumanizing conditions
of extreme poverty, to which more than a
billion of them are currently subjected.” 1
Governments set a date of 2015 by which
they would meet the Millennium Development
Goals: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,
achieve universal primary education, promote
gender equality and empower women, reduce
child mortality, improve maternal health,
combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases,
ensure environmental sustainability, and
develop a global partnership for development.
While achieving each goal is critical to development,
two are considered by leaders in the
international community to be central to all
others – universal education, and gender
equality and empowering women. 2
© UNICEF/UN/Eskinder Debebe/2003
Universal education might seem a relatively
straightforward goal but it has proven as
difficult as any to achieve. Decades after
commitments and reaffirmations of those
commitments have been made to ensure a
quality education for every child, some 121 million
children are still denied this right. Despite
thousands of successful projects in countries
around the globe, gender parity in education –
in access to school, successful achievement
and completion – is as elusive as ever and girls
continue to systematically lose out on the
benefits that an education affords.
As a result, the children whose lives would
have been saved if their mothers had been
educated continue to die. Those boys and
girls who would have been healthier had
THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S CHILDREN 2004
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