HIGLIGHTS: Children Participate in Session for the first time||Rich Nations Fail to Honour Pledges to Social Welfare in Developing Countries||USA & Somalia Only Two Nations that Failed to Ratify the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child ||STORY: Grown-ups have failed the world's children, allowing malnutrition, disease and abuse to ravage young people, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday at the opening of a global forum on children. (Read photo caption)

Addressing the hundreds of children who for the first time will be participants in this U.N. special session, Annan listed basic rights of childhood -- freedom from poverty, hunger and infectious diseases and from abuse and exploitation and access to education -- and said these have been denied to many.

The first young speaker, 13-year-old Gabriela Azurduy Arrieta of Bolivia, did not pull her punches, reinforcing the theme of victimized children and complicit adults.

The three-day special session has drawn representatives from more than 180 countries, including more than 400 children, to focus on health, education, the spread of AIDS and the exploitation of children as soldiers, slave workers and prostitutes.

The current conference follows up a 1990 World Summit on Children, when rich nations agreed to devote 0.7 percent of their gross national product to improve health care or education in developing countries. But such foreign aid dwindled in the past decade.

Developing countries were to invest 20 percent of their national budgets to social welfare but U.N. figures show they are spending only 12 percent to 14 percent.

USA is one of only two nations -- the other is Somalia -- that has failed to ratify the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Reagan and the first Bush administrations helped negotiate the treaty and the Clinton administration signed it. But conservatives argue that it undermines parental authority.

Conservative advisers are part of the U.S. delegation to this conference. U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson heads the delegation.

PHOTO CAPTION

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan opens the first U.N. children's summit Wednesday, May 8, 2002. Addressing several dozen world leaders and representatives from over 180 countries, Annan said young people in every country have a right to expect that the promises they made "to build a world fit for childre" are kept. (AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)