The progress of nations

Each year, the report challenges—even provokes—countries to fulfil those promises, and the 1997 edition is no exception. It assesses such fundamental areas as the quality of basic education, people’s access to hygienic sanitation and the effect of AIDS on child death rates. It also highlights issues that have been less visible on the development agenda, such as violence against women and girls, how justice systems handle young offenders and the protection of breastfeeding from unethical practices to market infant formula. In detailing a broad range of both achievements made and challenges remaining, the report calls on every country not just to fulfil the pledges explicit in the goals established at the Summit, but to maintain children at the very top of their national agenda