(taken from Children in the States Data Book 1998 (CDF): 2)

than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

Children's Defense Fund 1998 Priorities

• Ensuring every -- not every other -- American child a Healthy Start in life.  We seek to ensure effective state implementation of the recently enacted $48 billion State children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), to educate families about CHIP and Medicaid, and to enroll all eligible children.
• Ensuring every child a Head Start in life by providing parents quality, affordable child care options for all preschool and school-age children, with the assistance of employers, community institutions, and federal, state, and local governments.
• Ensuring every child a Fair Start in life by educating the public and policy makers about the unacceptable moral, human, and economic costs of permitting 14.5 million children to grow up poor and by mobilizing the nation to end child poverty as we know it.   Jobs with decent wages, community economic development, and a quality education for every child must become overarching national priorities.
• Ensuring every child a Safe Start in life by preventing violence against and by children.  Every community must be safe from violent adult and youth offenders.   But we oppose the growing criminalization of youths, especially minority youths, and the detention of nonviolent youth offenders and children who are truants and runaways in adult jails, a practice forbidden by current law.  We support more effective community-based prevention and interventions like after-school and summer programs, mentoring, and parent training.
• Ensuring every child a Moral Start in life through creative leadership development and community capacity building to ensure an intergenerational cadre of effective servant-leaders committed to building and sustaining a movement to Leave No Child Behind.

(taken from The State of America's Children Yearbook 1998 Washington DC: Children's Defense Fund, 1998) pp. xx, xxi)

Five Questions All American Citizens Should Ask Ourselves and Our Political Leaders About National Priorities

• Every 14 hours we spend more on the military than we do annually on programs to prevent and treat child abuse.
• Every 29 hours we spend more on the military than we do annually on summer jobs for unemployed youths.
• Every six days we spend more on military than we do annually on the Child Care and Development Block Grant for child care for low-income working parents.
• Every 11 days we spend more on the military than we do annually on Title I compensatory education for disadvantaged children.

When the polio virus killed 2,700 children and adults in its peak year - 7 a day - we declared a national emergency.   Why don't we declare a national emergency to stop the deadly gun virus that kills almost twice as many children - 5,285 a year, 14 a day - in their homes, neighborhoods, schools, and parks?

(UNICEF 'UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Frequently Asked Questions' 1997 p.5)

(National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, 1997 Annual Report; NCADP "Stop Killing Kids' p.1,2)

As part of an academic curriculum, Junior ROTC falls short.  The program brings retired military personnel into high school classrooms to teach a military curriculum.  According to a federal regulation (32 Code of Federal Regulations 542.5:3c), the "educational" goal of the JROTC program is to "create favorable attitudes and impressions toward the Services and toward careers in the Armed Forces."

"The expansion of JROTC in high schools runs counter to the current national trend towards higher academic standards.  College admission policies in states requiring a core curriculum for graduation indicate that students are not likely to receive credit for JROTC when they apply for college.  JROTC may in fact divert students from taking the courses they need for college admission or skills for a career and a full, satisfying life."

(Newletter of the Greater Kansas City Committee on Militarism in Schools Spring, 1998 p.1)

Malnutrition.   'Over 200 million children in developing countries under the age of five are malnourished...Malnutrition contributes to more than half of the nearly 12 million under-five deaths in developing countries each year.  Malnourished children often suffer the loss of precious mental capacities.  They fall ill more often.  If they survive, they may grow up with lasting mental or physical disabilities... It undermines the struggle of the United Nations for peace, equity and justice.  It is an egregious violation of child rights that undermines virtually every aspect of UNICEF's work for the survival, protection and full development of the world's children...More attention is lavished on the gyrations of the world stock markets than on malnutrition's vast destructive potential -- or on the equally powerful benefits of sound nutrition.'

(Carol Bellamy, The State of the Worlds Children 1998 (NY:UNICEF/Oxford University Press) p.6,9)

(Carol Bellamy, The State of the Worlds Children 1997 (NY:UNICEF/Oxford University Press) p.46)

Around 1 billion people -- one out of every six on the planet -- are between 10 and 19 years of age, 85% in developing countries.   And they face profound obstacles:

• Around the globe, 73 million children age 10 to 14 are working -- not counting the tens of millions, mostly girls, believed to be in domestic service.

• In developing countries, 59 percent of girls and 48 percent of boys are not enrolled in secondary school.'

Carol Bellamy 'The Progress of Nations 1998' (NY:UNICEF) p.21

• 2 million killed;
• 4-5 million disabled;
• 12 million left homeless;
• more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents;
• some 10 million psychologically traumatized.

The increasing number of child victims is primarily explained by the higher porportion of civilian deaths in recent conflicts.  In the wars of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, only about half of the victims were civilians.

In the later decades of this century the proportion of civilian victims has been rising steadily; in World War II it was two thirds, and the end of the 1980's it was almost 90 pecent...'

'When ethnic loyalties prevail, a perilous logic clicks in.   The escalation from ethnic superiority to ethnic cleansing to genocide, as we have seen, can become an irreversible process.  Killing adults is then not enough; future generations of the enemy -- their children must also be eliminated.  As one political commentator expressed it in a 1994 radio broadcast before violence erupted in Rwanda, "To kill the big rats, you have to kill the little rats."...Sexual violence is particularly common in ethnic conflicts.'

'...One of the most deplorable developments in recent years has been the increasing use of young children as soldiers...Recently, in 25 countries, thousands of children under the age of 16 have fought in wars.  In 1988 alone, they numbered as many as 200,000.'

(Carol Bellamy, The State of the Worlds Children 1996 (NY:UNICEF/Oxford University Press) p.13-14)

(Ramsey Clark et al. Challenge to Genocide (NY: International Action Center, 1998)