UNICEF: Children Makers & Markers of Healthy, Sustainable Societies

NEW YORK, N.Y.    UNICEF released a new position paper, Sustainable Development Starts and Ends with Safe, Healthy and well-educated Children , which highlights key factors for achieving a world fit for children—well into the future.

“Children and young people are the makers of a future sustainable world and measures of their progress will also be the markers of that world,” Richard Morgan said in a statement. He serves as UNICEF’s senior adviser on the post-2015 development agenda.

As global leaders and activists set an agenda for the post-2015 world, the period following the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals , UNICEF underscores that a successful outcome depends on children being at the heart of that agenda.

The paper makes a direct link between what needs to be done for children today – particularly those most disadvantaged – and how this will affect the future of their countries.

UNICEF’s position paper points to three key factors: First, that the progress of children can be a major driver of sustainable development; second, children are stakeholders in a sustainable world – the ones with the most to gain and the most to lose from success or failure; and finally, children can and should be major participants in and contributors to a healthy, sustainable planet.

According to UNICEF, children represent approximately one-third of the world’s population, and their rights and participation as part of a sustainable future are already guided by an extensive range of international conventions, treaties and other legal instruments—including the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“Their learning, their nutritional growth, their safety and confidence, their creativity and ideas – underpinned by freedom from fear as well as freedom from want – will be the markers of how decisively we are moving to a sustainable future for all,” Morgan added.

Release of the paper comes one year after the Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference , which marked 20 years since the landmark meeting in Rio de Janeiro at which world leaders, NGOs and the private sector representatives came together to discuss poverty reduction and ways to advance social equality and environmental protection.

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