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Rwandan refugees in Zaire await repatriation, 1997 UNHCR / H.J. DAVIES In an era of tightening budgets, a central concern at the forthcoming children’s summit is likely to be whether agencies like UNHCR have the resources to even keep pace with the myriad of problems they face let alone being able to eliminate them. Education is one of five priority areas which UNHCR designated as being in need of particular attention. The others are the separation of children from their families, their sexual exploitation and military recruitment and the often ignored but particularly troubling world of adolescents—that twilight period between childhood and adulthood where so much can go wrong but when young people are often at their most resourceful. Despite the classroom’s obvious importance it is notoriously difficult to reach the estimated 25 million minors currently uprooted from their homes living as refugees or internally displaced persons. Many live in sprawling refugee camps or war devastated countries such as Angola, far away from schoolrooms, teachers or textbooks. In 1990 some 320,000 children attended UNHCR-sponsored classes. Latest estimates suggest that by 2000 this figure had risen encouragingly to one million out of five million eligible children. But even this improvement masked some intractable problems, especially in the area of higher education, where very few displaced boys or girls have a chance to further their skills. For six years, my school has been a railroad car. It is difficult to learn. During summer it’s impossible to stay cool and during winter it’s impossible to stay warm. During winter I wear all of my clothes, two pairs of pants, a shirt, a jacket and a hat. After one or two lessons in the cold, the teachers usually let us leave. A 17-year-old student in Azerbaijan The forthcoming Special Session for children “is not going to be a panacea for children,” Carol Bellamy warned recently. “We are not going to find a magical formula of words that will lead men to lay down their guns or abducted children suddenly to be released. But it is clear that business as usual is not enough.” Machel advocates sweeping changes in the decade ahead. The kind of assistance given to children must be reshaped to include not only food and water, but also educational and sports equipment. “It doesn’t cost much to put 1,000 footballs or tennis balls into one of those packages, but they would mean so much to children,” she said. There must be a fairer distribution of assistance to children around the world, especially to those in the poorest countries. Nations which flaunt international conventions with impunity must be made to pay a price far higher than political embarrassment, she added. Change could be afoot in the field of international law where there has been tentative discussion on the idea of strengthening the 1951 Geneva refugee convention with an optional protocol on the protection of children. A final objective seems to be quite clear for the new millennium—fewer conferences, less talk and more action to actually help children. “If we had implemented half the resolutions we have approved, even half of them, we would be in very good shape today,” Machel said. “It’s time to cut back on the discussions and concentrate on action to help children.”

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