When the lives and the rights of children are at stake, there must be no silent witnesses.

The economic benefits of investing in children have been extensively documented. Investing fully in children today will ensure the well-being and productivity of future generations for decades to come. By contrast, the physical, emotional and intellectual impairment that poverty inflicts on children canmean a lifetime of suffering and want - and a legacy of poverty for the next generation.

It's estimated that there may be two hundred and fifty million children in the world engaged in some form of exploitative child labour.

We must ensure that while eliminating child labor in the export industry, we are also eliminating their labour from the informal sector, which is more invisible to public scrutiny - and thus leaves the children more open to abuse and exploitation.

And each of us can practice rights ourselves, treating each other without discrimination, respecting each other's dignity and rights.

The Convention is not only a visionary document. We are reminded daily that it is an agreement that works - and its utility can be seen in the everyday use to which I have seen it increasingly being put by country after country, in policy, in practice and in law.

For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.