Hundreds of governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) will meet to discuss how to ensure that the world's children have adequate access to health, nutrition, water, sanitation, and education and literacy, and how to protect them from armed conflict and exploitation. The session is a deeply commendable effort to raise the bar for children's rights and well being around the world.

"We the Children" shows that we've come a long way in the past decade in protecting children. There are now three million fewer infant deaths each year than a decade ago. Basic immunization rates have dramatically increased to 75 per cent, preventing not only child deaths but also polio, blindness and mental retardation among children. Enrollment in primary schools has steadily increased, reaching 82 per cent worldwide, and disparities between boys' and girls' enrollment levels have narrowed.

But a long way remains ahead. "We the Children" observes that every year almost 11 million children still die before their fifth birthdays, and often from readily preventable causes. Serious inequalities remain among and within countries along income lines, among minority groups, and between urban and rural populations. In sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the wake of the AIDS epidemics, some basic health and education levels for children have actually declined.

These continuing crises stem largely, of course, from poverty. Poverty hits children hard, depriving them of the physical and mental nourishment they need to grow strong. As a result, global development lies at the center of the challenge to improve the world for children.

The United Nations has called on the international community to recognize this critical connection, noting that the universal access to health, education and water and sanitation that could prevent most serious child development difficulties would cost an "additional $70 billion to $80 billion" a year--a tiny fraction of the $30 trillion dollar global economy.

But cooperation must come from both developed and developing countries.

In particular, the continuing militarization of the world community must be seriously examined, and the search for a "peace dividend" renewed.

Developing countries on average spend more on military defense, for example, than on basic education and health care. And developed countries have spent about 10 times more on military defense than on international development assistance. President Bush has recently emphasized US commitment to development by promising an additional $5 billion in aid (about which I will say more in a future column), which, if honored, may significantly help the worldíworld's poorest children. But $5 billion is a long way away from the 0.7 percent of annual economic output that the United Nations recommends as a benchmark for development assistance.

Importantly, though, governments need assistance and encouragement in children's issues from the private sector and from civil society. Unicef has joined with other groups to launch the Global Movement for Children, a coalition of organizations around the world. Vital contributions for children have come from a vast array of entities, from the much-lauded Grameen Bank, a community development institution in Bangladesh, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has become a leader on children's vaccines. To coincide with the special session, the Global Movement for Children has initiated the "Say Yes for Children" campaign, a world petition, accessible on the Internet, that calls for increased accountability on children's issues.

So, much is being done, but much remains to be done. If Secretary General Annan is correct in identifying children's well-being as the world's most universally cherished aspiration, though, why does so much work remain to be done? The answer, perhaps, lies in an assertion once made by British economist John Maynard Keynes: "In the long run, we are all dead."

Keynes intended this statement to influence economic policy in Britain after World War I. But it also sums up the central challenge confronting childreníchildren's advocates. It's not true that we are all dead in the long run--our children, and our children's children, live on. But remembering that requires a shift in focus from the short-term attention span in our thinking, both individual and collective, that too often prevails. Protecting children is investing in the future, and sometimes we're not so good at planning ahead.

Let's hope this month's UN special session can nudge us a little closer to recognizing that the long run counts--especially for children.