Hearing children's voices in this way will make it clearer how the world needs to change if it is to respect their fundamental rights. The flipside of this is the lack of interest in consulting children hitherto has left them invisible to policy makers at all levels of society and, as European Parliament President Nicole Fontaine has said, children's invisibility has "an inheritently discriminatory impact.

    The idea that children are discriminated against is a shocking one when people first encounter it. Even veteran activists for children's rights may balk at the idea. After all, our first reaction is to object since children are appealing: they evoke a natural sympathy in us. How could there be such discrimination?

    Discrimination against children is usually less direct, less naked than that, for example, against racial or ethnic groups. It is assumed that children and their interests will be represented and safeguarded by adults, whether by their parents, their teachers or other authority figures. But, children have no right to vote or to political representaion nor any access to the courts. In many countries they remain the only people whom it is lawful to hit. Their views are rarely solicited or expressed in the media in any meaningful way.

    No one is assuming that young children should be given the vote: Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child says clearly that "in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child [should be] given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child." Yet it is odd, to say the least, that all over the world adolescents can be married or sent to war years before they are allowed to take part in elections. And in democracy children's lack of voting power can mean that elected representatives take no notice of children's interests. The net results can be disastrous for children. Over the past 20 years, for example, there has been a growth in child poverty in almost every country in the European Union and the proportion of public expenditure on children has diminished - at a time when there has been a consistent period of economic growth during which overall wealth has increased.

    The answer must be two-pronged. Recognizing the likelihood of discrimination, even of an indirect and non-malicious kind, governments must set up specific mechanisms to ensure that their policies and programmes, respect child rights. Some countries have appointed ombudspersons to device specific mechanisms for taking account of the views and perspectives of children and adolescents. In Bolivia, Offices for the Defence of Children have been set up in 158 municipalities, and the goal is to establish at least one in each of the country's 314 municipalities. These offices have been active in denouncing abuses that would previously have gone unnoticed, as in a recent case involving sexual abuse of an indigenous girl by 11 soldiers where the mobilization of public opinion and the local media resulted in a prosecution that in the past would have been extremely unlikely.

    However, governments must also find ways of taking more serious account of the views of children - and of adolescents in particular. The proliferation of youth parliaments, for example, is an important development. But these must be seen not simply as an educational exercise for the children and adolescents involved (as is often the temptation) but as important democratic institutions in their own right. Some of the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States - notably Albania, Azerbajan, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova - are blazing a trail in this regard.

    As children attending the January Preparatory Committee meeting for the UN Special Session on Children said in a joint statement: "We would like adults to meet the promises they have made to us so that we can aspire to a better future...."