This is a special newsletter prepared in connection with the International Policy Conference on the African Child and The Family being organised by the African Child Policy Forum, 21-22 May 2004 at the Conference hall of the African Union here in Addis Ababa.

The choice of this theme is dictated by two considerations: firstly, the central place accorded to the family in the promotion and realisation of child rights in both the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC), and, secondly, the concern provoked by the current crises facing African families.

The Conference is sponsored by the AU, UNICEF, UNFPA, DCI, PLAN and Save the Children Sweden. The African Child Policy Forum expresses its appreciation and gratitude to these organisations for their support.

It is now fifteen years since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its operational arm, the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children signed at the World Summit for Children in 1990. At this summit, Heads of State and Government committed themselves to achieving specific goals by 2000 and these included:

Reduction of under-5 mortality rate by one-third to a level of 70 per 1000 lives;

Reduction of maternal mortality rate by a half;

Reduction of severe and moderate malnutrition among under-5 children by a half;

Universal access to safe drinking water;

Universal access to basic education.

Fifteen years on, these targets are

far from being met, and in some cases there may even have been regression. African children remain the most illiterate, the most diseased, perhaps the most abused when you consider those used as active instruments of war or are victims of it, and  those trapped in trafficking and various forms of slavery or slave-like practices.

Let the figures speak for themselves:

Under-5 mortality rate at 173 per 1000 is almost twice that of other developing regions;

Net primary school enrolment is at 2/3 of other Developing countries;

Over 40 per cent of children 10-14 years old are estimated to be child labourers compared to half that much in other Developing countries;

Some 70 per cent of the world total of AIDS orphans are in Sub-Saharan Africa