“UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Twenty years after the U.N. adopted a treaty guaranteeing children’s rights, 1 billion children are still deprived of food, shelter or clean water, and nearly 200 million are chronically malnourished, UNICEF said Thursday.
There are some bright spots — fewer youngsters are dying and more are going to school, the U.N. children’s agency said in a report issued on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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Only two countries — the United States and Somalia — have not ratified it. The Clinton administration in the 1990s signed the convention but never submitted it to the Senate for ratification because a number of groups argued it infringed on the rights of parents and was inconsistent with state and local laws.
Asked about the U.S. failure to ratify, Veneman said “it is frustrating,” but she noted that President Barack Obama and U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice “have expressed a strong desire to move the U.S. in the direction of approving the convention.”
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