The numbers are grim: Every day more than 25,000 children under age 5 -- the equivalent of 125 jetliners full of youngsters -- die from hunger, poverty or easily preventable illnesses, such as diarrhea and malaria. Millions of others are abandoned, trafficked into prostitution, forced into armed conflict or used as child laborers -- mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. While governments and nongovernmental organizations struggle to help, aid cutbacks due to the world economic crisis could trigger 200,000-400,000 additional child deaths each year. Meanwhile, experts and policy makers disagree over how best to combat AIDS among children, and whether more foreign aid would do more harm than good. Others question whether the United States should ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States is the only nation besides Somalia that hasn't adopted the treaty.

Robert Kiener is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in the London Sunday Times, The Cristian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, Time Life Books, Asia Inc. and other publications. For more than two decades he lived and worked as an editor and correspondent in Guam, Hong Kong, England and Canada and is now based in the United States. He frequently travels to Asia to report on international issues. He holds a M.A. in Asian Studies from Hong Kong University and an M.Phil. in international relations from Cambridge University.