Mr. President,
Illustrious Ministers,
Distinguished Participants,

I extend to you all my cordial greetings and I congratulate the President, in particular, on his wise and successful guidance of this Assembly.

Over the last decade, more than two million children have been killed in armed conflicts, six million children have suffered disabilities, and tens of thousands of children have been mutilated as a result of anti-personnel mines. During the course of 2002 three hundred thousand children were recruited as soldiers. Over four million three hundred thousand children have died in recent years of AIDS. Every day, seven thousand children fall sick with AIDS, and in Africa alone over fourteen million children have been made orphans because of this disease. Poverty continues to be the principal cause of sickness during childhood. One thousand two hundred million people live on less than a dollar a day. Even in the richest countries one child in every six lives under the poverty threshold. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing greater. 30% of children under the age of five suffer from hunger or malnutrition, and 50% of the whole of the Sub-Saharan population of Africa does not have access to drinking water.

Two hundred and fifty million minors of the age of fifteen work, and fifty to sixty million of them work in dangerous conditions. According to the World Labour Organisation, one hundred and twenty million boys and girls between the ages of five and fourteen work full time, most of them for six days a week. The rest work for seven days a week without a rest period. Most of the time they are forced to do so in places that lack ventilation and have bad lighting and are watched over by armed guards who are there to stop them from running away.

Today, many children and adolescents are abandoned to themselves and their own impulses. Internet and the television are their company. Everywhere we encounter the widespread presence of stereo compact disk players, computers, playstations, digital telecameras, and cellular telephones. There is no control over television programmes or over Internet, in which children and adolescents browse without any kind of moral guidance. The sex trade, paedophilia, violence in schools, crimes, gangs and so on have all increased. According to data provided by ISTAT, during his school years a child will have watched fifteen thousand hours of television and 'witnessed' eighteen thousand murders in a context full of violence, drugs and sex.

Many families have abandoned their specific task of bringing up their children. Fathers and mothers work and do not have time for their children. They do not give them love, care, personal communication or a formation of their moral conscience, teaching them to distinguish between right and wrong. The situation is even worse when the families are divided and the children themselves are 'divided'. It is often the case that due to the prevailing norm of "non directivity," the education provided by schools is reduced to mere information and authentic education is abandoned because it is believed that this would damage the right of children to self-determination.

In the face of the worrying situation that now besets children, the seven guidelines for the future proposed by the World Health Organisation seem to me very suitable. I believe, in fact, that priority should be given to mother-child health, that infectious diseases afflicting children should be prevented, that accidents should be avoided, and that the physical environment should be improved, in particular in relation to water, hygiene, environmental pollution, the ways in which diseases are spread, the dangers generated by chemicals, accidents, and the behaviour of children and adolescents, their psycho-social development, and looking after them in special high risk situations such as that of 'street children'.

For our part, in recognising the urgency of the guidelines that have been presented, we lay emphasis on two points for the creation of an environment suitable for children. First of all, combating poverty with adequate measures within the present-day globalised economy. An economy that is an end in itself cannot but generate forms of injustice on a broad scale. An economy, whether globalised or otherwise, is for the person and not vice versa. The time has come to consider seriously the need for the international common good, which we could now define as an international 'global' good. The injustice that exists between industrialised countries and developing countries is not in the least sustainable.

The other equally important point mentioned by the WHO concerns the behaviour and the psychosocial development of the child. As a human person, the child is a very complex being, whose physical, sexual, psychic, mental, economic, social, political and spiritual aspects intertwine. These aspects act as communicating vases and require a holistic and not a departmentalised environment. It is the whole person that is developed and not only one of his aspects. The behaviour of the child is the self-development of his own life project. For this reason, he must know who he is, what he wants, what constructs him and what destroys him, and in this complex situation he needs a clear and solid orientation.

The affection and the love of his parents and of all of his family is what is primarily needed for his own self-understanding. When these are absent the development of other elements becomes difficult and, at times, becomes harmful. The environment to be favoured, therefore, is a healthy family environment made up of a stable and well anchored family in which all the aspects of the growth of the human person find their balance. Within the educational community, schools that really educate the child must be an extension and a broadening of the family itself. There should be a continuity and a mutual synergy between the family and the school institution at all levels, which in a thoughtful and reflective way will introduce the child into, and locate him within, a complete social environment. In conclusion, to improve the child's environment we must first of all effectively fight the poverty within his own country and on the international level, then also strengthen the family and ensure authentic school formation.

Geneva,
The World Health Organisation