Thank you, Mr. President,My delegation would like to thank UNICEF for the report put forward under this agenda item and for the excellent presentation by Ms. Bellamy. We congratulate UNICEF and recognize that this year's report is an improvement from last year's. It is more analytical, to the point and highlights clearly the challenges ahead and UNICEF's clear mandate and work towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Sweden would like to stress the importance of a rights based approach in development co-operation. We believe that the main principles of non-discrimination, the best interests of the child, the right to life, survival and development and the participation of children as expressed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child should infuse every aspect of UNICEF's work. We commend UNICEF for being a strong advocate for the convention on the rights of the child and we are pleased with the progress made by UNICEF to move towards the integration of a human rights approach in all its programming.Mainstreaming a gender equality perspective into every area of international development cooperation is a key issue for the government of Sweden. Discrimination against women starts in childhood, which is why we believe that special attention, needs to be given to the girl child in the planning and implementation of measures. UNICEF should continue to highlight the important and relevant goals and recommendations of the international conferences of the 90's, especially the Cairo and Beijing conferences. Continuing to work with implementing the recommendations from those conferences as well as the commitments expressed in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) are essential if we are to achieve gender equality and improve sexual and reproductive health and rights for women, girls and young people -two areas, which in turn, are closely linked to the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Girls education
Mr. President,
Sweden has long encouraged UNICEF to play a leading role in the promotion of girls' education and we commend you for the excellent work that you are doing. We want to stress the importance of partnership in the area of education, an example of which is the work with the World Bank on Fast- Track Initiative.
A matter of concern for Sweden is the work with girls and boys with disabilities. How does UNICEF integrate their rights and needs when working with "child friendly" schools?
We would also like to highlight the risk of not achieving the Millennium Development Goal of eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005, what are your views on the development in this area?
Immunization plus
With regards to immunization plus, Sweden believes that greater emphasis should be given to strengthen national capacity to provide immunization to all children. To achieve sustainability, countries themselves must take full responsibility for immunization activities.
HIV/AIDS
The fight against HIV/AIDS is one of the world's most pressing challenges. We encourage UNICEF's holistic approach to combating HIV/AIDS and we believe that in order to fight it there needs to be a clear link with sexual and reproductive health care and services and education for youth. We urge UNICEF to further strengthen its reporting on HIV/AIDS. There are still many questions that are unanswered. For example:
1 How does UNICEF recognize the various and varying needs of girls and boys? 2 How does UNICEF work with other UN entities in order to prevent the disproportionate effect of HIV/AIDS on women and girls, both in terms of susceptibility to HIV infection and in terms of shouldering the burden of caring for others who are ill in the home and community?
Child protection
Sweden is of the opinion that UNICEF's work in the area of child protection - both legally and in actuality - is vital, especially in these turbulent times with various conflicts in different parts of the world. We would like to encourage UNICEF to further focus its targets and goals in this area. Many of the current targets deal with analyzing and identifying the impact of violence, abuse and exploitation. How is UNICEF integrating the results gathered from these analyses into concrete plans and programs? and how does UNICEF see its role concerning children affected by armed conflict vis-à-vis the office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Children and armed conflict?
In this context, we are deeply concerned about the growing trend of trafficking in children. We believe that UNICEF has the opportunity to push this issue further up on the political agenda in order to stop this ruthless phenomenon.
The report of the Executive Director states that UNICEF's program expenditure for child protection for 2003 was about 123 million dollar or 10% of the total expenditure, Sweden would like to encourage UNICEF to increase its involvement and programming in this area.
Finally Mr. President,
I know that we will have the opportunity to discuss different aspects of the important issue of effective country programs of cooperation later during this meeting, especially the issue of Joint programming and the important role of the UNDAFs. A full alignment of each agency with the UNDAFs are of utmost importance and will be one of the key issues to be discussed during the TCPR later this year. As is mentioned in the report of the Executive Director it is important to work to increase coordination and to strengthen joint result-based planning, monitoring and reporting as well as joint evaluations.
Mr. President
We would like to reconfirm emphatically our commitment to UNICEF's work and progress and we support you in your important work across the globe.