Sabre, the global travel technology company, recently launched its “Passport to Freedom” initiative to fight child sex trafficking and exploitation. The company also joined the “Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism.” This is a big deal: Sabre is the first such company to join “The Code.”
The Code, a joint venture of ECPAT International and the tourism private sector, provides a way for businesses in the travel and tourism industry to combat child sexual exploitation. UNICEF serves as an advisory partner for The Code.

This week, the bipartisan Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2011 (S. 641) unanimously passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee! Our thanks to the Committee’s leaders, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), as well as the bill’s sponsors, Senator Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Corker (R-TN).

Your voices helped make this progress possible! But the job is not done – the legislation still must pass the full Senate, and the House of Representatives still needs to pass a companion bill of the same name (H.R. 3658). You can help – keep contacting your Members of Congress to ask them to support the Water for the World Act.

Mark Engman is with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s Public Policy & Advocacy team.

Heart surgeon, U.S. Senator, Senate Majority Leader, chairman of a nonprofit – Bill Frist has played many roles during his life of public service. But his most important role right now is that of humanitarian.

Dr. Frist joined Dr. Jill Biden (wife of Vice President Joe Biden) on a trip to see the effects of the famine affecting 12 million people in the Horn of Africa, and to draw attention to the plight of hundreds of thousands of refugees in the camps of Dadaab, Kenya.

In March, Delta took another step forward as a leader in helping the world’s children: it became the first major airline in the world to enter the fight against the sexual exploitation of children by signing the “Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism.”

Most Americans probably missed it, but November 5 was an important milestone for the United States – on that date was the United States’ first ever presentation of a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) report to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely accepted human rights treaty in history. To date, 193 nations have ratified this important treaty. The only two UN member states that have not ratified the CRC are Somalia and the United States.

This year’s report, Towards Universal Access, assessed HIV/AIDS progress in 144 low- and middle-income countries in 2009. It documents great successes in access to treatment, prevention and prevention of mother-to-child transmission services.

UNICEF Senior Child Protection Specialist Francesca Moneti told Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the Commission’s chair, that child marriage affects millions of girls in all regions of the world, especially in South Asia and in Africa. In Bangladesh and in five western central African countries, six of every 10 girls are married before the age of 18.

President Obama just returned from the annual G8 Summit, held this year in Canada. In past years, these G8 summits paid lip service to the need to address high child mortality rates – but never made specific, substantial commitments to help save the lives of more than eight million children under five who die every year from preventable causes.

This year, though, the Canadian Government decided to make newborn, child, and maternal health the legacy initiative of Canada’s G8 presidency. UNICEF worked with the Canadian Government in crafting the “G8 Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Under-Five Child Health,” which focuses on training health workers to provide a basket of low-cost, high-impact health and nutrition interventions to the poorest children and mothers in the communities where they live.

It is an important initiative, and one we believe that the U.S. Government should support. Just before the G8 launched this year, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s President and CEO, Caryl Stern, led a letter from several major NGOs urging President Obama to support the Canadian initiative – and to show its support by doubling U.S. Government resources to save children’s lives.

It’s all part of our work, from grade school kids to the most powerful person on the planet, to get to Zero.

In April, we shared a couple of Fieldnotes entries about the devastation of landmines and cluster munitions, and UNICEF’s work to help keep children safe from landmines (remember the “magic cricket“?)

In mine-affected communities, children’s everyday activities can have a sudden end. UNICEF recognizes that the only way to put an end to these indiscriminate weapons is to ban them outright. In that spirit, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF is a long-time member of the U.S. Coalition to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munitions (www.uscbl.org), advocating for the United States to ratify the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and the 2008 Cluster Munitions Convention.

On May 18, the movement toward U.S. ratification of the Mine Ban Treaty took an big step forward. A letter written by mine ban champion Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) went to President Obama, asking him to accede to the Mine Ban Treaty – signed by 68 Senators including ten Republicans and two Independents, signifying a key two-thirds Senate majority in favor of ratification. Sixty-eight is a special number because it represents the Senate two-thirds majority needed for ratification if the Administration sends the treaty to the Senate for consent.