The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is pleased with its work in China in the past two decades, according to Sadig Rasheed, director of the Programme Division of the Children's Fund.

Since 1979 when it began cooperation with China, the UNICEF has initiated over 100 programmes here.

These focus on five major areas: health care and nutrition, basic education, water and environmental sanitation, the protection of mothers, and the protection of children in difficulty.

The schemes include a water and environmental sanitation project, which aims to improve sanitation in rural area, and a program trying to make young people more aware of how to prevent catching HIV/AIDS.

"Our successes will not only improve conditions in China, but will make a contribution to the whole world," said Rasheed.

Meanwhile, the UNICEF and Beijing Women's Federation arranged for over 300 migrant workers to receive training on children's rights yesterday.

It is the first time the workers, who come from outside Beijing, have learned about the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international convention signed and adopted by China in 1992.

Non-Beijing citizens who spend at least one night in Beijing number 2.15 million.

Over 150,000 of them are children. Most of their parents are from remote and poverty-stricken areas and have had little education. The parents are not familiar with laws related to children and usually do not know how to educate them.

The training course was designed to help them learn how to prevent their children from being hurt in accidents and how to keep the youngsters healthy.

(China Daily 10/30/2000)