United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan

Thank you, Ann.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear friends,

Thank you all for being here. Today, we launch a campaign to address one of the cruelest tragedies of our time.

It is a call for united action against an AIDS epidemic that is increasingly hurting children and young people.

Millions of people and young people are already affected by the pandemic -- including those infected through the most heart-rendering form of transmission -- mother to child.

The number is multiplying every day as we saw in the film. Youth make up half of all new HIV infections worldwide, with a young person contracting the disease every 15 seconds.

They often lack simple and fundamental information that is crucial to their safety. As we know, in the world of AIDS, silence is death.

This is why it is so important that this campaign is being launched today by UNICEF, UNAIDS and their partners are together in the fight. It is literally a matter of saving lives.

We must all unite to reach young people with the life-saving information they need -- the United Nations and its agencies, Governments, civil society and the private sector, the entertainment community and the sporting world. Let me thank Mrs. Kagame, the wife of the President of Rwanda, Sir Roger Moore and Bill Roedy for coming to show their support today.

This commitment, once made, must be translated into concrete action. We need to strengthen partnerships and mobilize more funding. We need to deploy better skills and unleash all our energy and imagination. We need to communicate with children and young people in a language that works for them.

That is why I am delighted that today, we are joined by young people like Kerrel, telling their stories about how AIDS has affected their lives. Kerrel, thank you for for having the courage to share your moving and courageous story

And you will hear how some countries have achieved impressive results in fighting AIDS, such as Thailand, Brazil and Cambodia.

Those countries all have one thing in common. They acted quickly and decisively to launch nationwide campaigns, showing that the Government was openly and seriously engaged in the struggle.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We need to see results like that all over the world. So let us listen to young people everywhere. Let us speak up to support them. Let us Unite for Children, and Unite against AIDS.

Thank you very much.