St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 26

3 MAY 1 9 1985 May 19, 1985 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH iic fWorld ChUd Abuse Cited By U.N. Group This coupon worth $3405 or 5365 off our regular sale price. "The United States has the weakest system of the Western industrialized societies to assure children get what they need to grow into productive adults." COUPON SALE 1985 DELTA II 5-Speed Choice of Blades List $328.00 lion, with 70 million of those in developing countries. Many of them are in Latin America, where Paul Altesman, UNICEF's special assistant coordinator for U.N.

affairs, called the situation abysmal. In the United States, census figures show that almost 22 percent of children younger than 18 were living below the poverty line in 1983, an increase of almost 35 percent in four years, according to James D. Weill, legal director of the Washington-based Children's Defense Fund. He said that as a consequence, many of these children get inadequate shelter, nourishment and health care. "The United States has the weakest system of the Western industrialized societies to assure children get what they need to grow into productive adults," Weill said.

"What conventions do mainly is make nations update their domestic law" to conform, said Michael Jupp, U.N. representative in New York for the Geneva-based Defense for Children International rights group. But other observers think the convention is getting bogged down in East-West squabbling. They note that the United States, the Western bloc leader, has a history of not ratifying such conventions, while East bloc nations often ally themselves with the Third World in support of conventions. As an alternative to legal efforts, UNICEF has undertaken an internal study to come up with what it hopes will be some low-cost programs to aid children.

SALE PRICE 2 8 WITH COUPON m. ft -i special orders. No laraways. 11769 Manchester 1 Mile East of Hwy. 270 8:30 to 5:30, Monday Thursday 8:30 to 8:30, Saturday 9:00 to 5:00 1 I 10 said Rosalind Harris, head of a non-governmental committee of UNICEF in New York that is studying the convention.

The convention was proposed by a Polish delegation to UNICEF in 1979 during the International Year of the Child. It has been under study for five years and is being formed article by article in annual sessions lasting one week by a subgroup of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. It is intended to give some teeth to a quarter-century-old U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which stated that children shall "enjoy special pro-, tection" and should be provided the means to grow in a "healthy and normal manner." The declaration had no legal clout.

Under international law, nations that ratify a convention are saying they agree to abide by its covenants. The articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child deal with education, nourishment, health care, citizenship and drafting children as soldiers. Studies by the United Nations and other organizations indicate that conditions for children often fall short of mm Ceramic at 1.69 sq. $L- I -tl mi- Mm SSEt iKor ceramic wan mmmmm PANAMAS GALLERY EDITION Intel light it Included List $640.00 SALE PRICE WITH COUPON Prir OaaiI Till lim I -4 uritw In-ttock merchandise only. Ho The Name You IliMaSTn 1 Lighting Daily Trust Since 1892 "an.

at the standards proposed: UNICEF, in a report two years ago, estimated that of the 560 million children younger than 5, an average of 40,000 die each day. Children are increasingly victims in armed conflicts. According to statistics provided by a U.N. source, 5 percent of casualties in World War I were civilians; the proportion leaped to 50 percent in World War II, 70 percent in Vietnam and as high as 90 percent in Lebanon. Iraq, as of last year, was holding about 300 Iranian "child soldiers" at a special compound west of Baghdad.

According to U.N. documents, war correspondents and other sources, thousands of children are fighting for Iran or serving as human "mine sweepers," although the government of Iran denies the charge- U.N. studies report child prostitution or selling children for domestic service is commonplace in many regions. "It is current practice in Bolivia and Colombia for little Indian girls to be 'adopted from the age of 3 by white families," says one U.N. report.

The number of homeless or abandoned children is estimated by UNICEF sources to be as high as 80 mil Look SR Many Look 70! Ceramic MS Many Buy our pattern SaDecorator fOl MfiliHiS Jfim Mosaic Tile Latex fSlI Buy our YF-1122, YF-1123 orl r0- ifafl fefeJ I anv of our MS Series ala-erf a II II I allil 8Srws i HiSBj I I 3 By Michael Roddy Of The Associated Press NEW YORK Several hundred prisoners of war under age 15 are being held in Iraq, and international rights organizations say thousands more "child soldiers" have served, and died, for Iran in the war between the two nations. In Colombia and Bolivia, Indian i girls as young as age 3 work as house servants for white families, according to a report by the United Nations. The report also says child prostitution is widespread in parts of Asia and Latin America. 1 I Around the world, 40,000 children under age 5 die every day, and half those deaths could be prevented by rudimentary, low-cost health and null; trition programs, says UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. Statistics like these make some peo- 2 pie say that not enough is being done to protect the rights of the world's most defenseless and least indepen-2 dent citizens children.

Some children's advocates support expanded health, nutrition and educa- tion programs. And others pin their hopes on a proposed U.N. convention i that for the first time would define the rights of children under a recognized document of international law. Jr Such a document, supporters say, at the very least would "shame some governments into compliance. "It would establish a reporting system and then you would have nations realizing that they can't go up there Z2nd say, 'We haven't done a thing for Survivor Recounts Bank Holdup LAWTON, Okla.

(UPI) A teenager who survived a bloody bank robbery that left four people dead says she left the bank with her infant daughter when she saw a customer being beaten, but was captured when she returned with her husband. Belen Robles, 16, will continue her testimony Monday, when the trial of Jay Wesley Neill and Robert Grady Johnson resumes. She was not asked Friday by attorneys to point out her assailant in the courtroom. Mrs. Robles testified that when she entered the bank on Dec.

14 she found the phones ringing and no one in sight. Before leaving, she saw someone in a red shirt and blue jeans, apparently beating someone in a back room. She went out to tell her husband, she said, and they re-entered the bank with their child. They were met by a gunman who said, "If you want to live, go into the back room and lie down," the girl told the jury. They were herded at gunpoint to the back room, where she knelt because there was no space to lie down among the bodies, she said.

The man asked her, "Lady, do you want your baby to die?" She replied that she did not and laid down, putting the baby beneath her. Neill and Johnson are charged with fatally stabbing three female employees and fatally shooting a male customer at the First Bank of Chattanoo-ga'a branch office at Geronimo, 7 miles south of Lawton in southwestern Oklahoma. Three others, including the Robles, were wounded in the robbery but survived. The defendants are charged with four counts of first-degree murder, three counts of shooting with intent to kill and one count of attempted shooting with intent to kill. Also testifying Friday was Comanche County Medical Examiner Dr.

Alan Boatswin, who said a knife found at the scene could have been used to kill the three female bank employees, who were stabbed a total, of 75 times. Dr. Boatswin testified that among the 75 wounds were "sawing lacera-. tiols around the women's necks, indi-eating an attempt to decapitate them. i FBI agents arrested Neill and John-' son Dec.

17 at a hotel in San Francisco Sand recovered more than half the $16,000 taken in the robbery. Prosecution witness Denise Ann Donahue, a travel agent at the Lawton Municipal Airport, said that on the day before the robbery, Neill had come to her counter to order tickets for a flight to the Bahamas or Jamaica for departure about 6 p.m. Dec. 14. Told that no seats were available, Ms.

Donahue said, he opted for a flight to San Francisco. She said that at 12:55 p.m. Dec. 14, a man identifying himself as Robert Johnson phoned and said he wanted to change the flight reservations to take the next flight out of Lawton to San Francisco. She said she had put the two men on a 2:35 p.m.

flight and told them that the ticket price would almost double. "That's no she said Johnson had told her. She said the defendants had come in about 2:30 p.m. and picked up the tickets, paying with twelve $100 bills and leaving her a $54 tip. Lawyer Rodney Bassel, represent- ing Johnson, motioned for a mistrial Friday, arguing that the defense attorneys were at odds instead of working together.

Bassel claims Johnson was not in the bank at the time of the killings. Neill's attorney, Mike Clark, contends that Johnson was present during the slayings. Reader 's Advocate Readers with questions, comments or complaints relating to the Post-Dispatch are invited to get in touch with Sue Ann Wood, the Reader's Advocate. Letters may be addressed to her at the Post-Dispatch, 900 North Tucker Boulevard, SL Louis, 63101, or she may be reached by telephone Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 5:30 p.m.

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