U.N. Special Session on Children to Begin on Wednesday; Topics to Include HIV/AIDS
About 65 world leaders and delegates from more than 150 nations this week will take part in the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Children in New York City, the Washington Times reports. The event, which will begin Wednesday and run through Friday, was orginally scheduled to take place Sept. 18, 2001, but it was postponed following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (Washington Times, 5/6). While HIV/AIDS was only a "blip on the world agenda" at the 1990 children's summit, it is expected to be a focus issue this year, Agence France-Presse reports, noting that the final document to come out of the conference should "have a clearer reference [to HIV/AIDS] than was possible in 1990." The U.N. General Assembly adopted two optional protocols on HIV/AIDS and the sexual exploitation of children on May 25, 2000, and they have proven "very useful in generating more public awareness" about the virus, according to UNICEF Director Carol Bellamy (Holloway, Agence France-Presse, 5/4).
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