BEIJING, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Nov. 20 this year will not pass as just another Universal Children's Day, much less just another day in another year.

    For on that day, the world's leading media organizations will, for the first time, launch an unprecedented media campaign to cover the lives of children in many parts of the world.

    Co-sponsored by UNICEF and Xinhua, the campaign is intended to open the world's eyes to how much more effort is still needed from adults to ensure that every child in this world can share a reason to smile.

    There will be around-the-clock live coverage of children on their special day, the latest transnational surveys on children's living conditions and children's photography contests that view the world we live in through children's eyes.

    Children are universally exalted as the future of mankind, yet more often than not they bear the brunt of natural or man-made disasters, be it tsunamis, exploitation or violence.

    In Beslan, a small town of the Republic of North Ossetia, children who survived a terrifying hostage ordeal five years ago say their worst fear remains the nightmarish bombings and gunshots.

    In the tiny territory of the Gaza Strip, which has been under a tight military and economic blockade, children have to imagine they are seeing real zebras when what they have in the local zoo are two donkeys painted with dark brown stripes.

    Far worse, in some war-torn African countries, joining an armed group as a soldier is the only option for some children and AK-47 automatic rifles are their childhood toys. Many die before they have a chance to grow up.

    The list of stories like these, of childhood shattered or stolen, goes on and on. They underline the urgent need for the international community to take immediate action and make a difference.

    The voice of that effort has been heard loud and clear since Nov. 20, 1959, when the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

    Thirty years later, the Convention on the Rights of Child was drafted on the same date in a bid to guarantee the basic rights and welfare of children worldwide. So far, 193 UN member states have ratified that convention, making it one of the most endorsed conventions in the world, if not the most.

    However, these documents alone will not be enough to spread awareness of children's current living and growing conditions among residents of our global village or arouse a determination to respond if the power of media coverage is absent.

    Through wide media coverage, children can enlist help from all social sectors and join hands in refining their own destinies, while the media can also help shape a better future for children worldwide by raising public awareness about their living conditions and welfare and pushing for concrete action.

    Media coverage in the past has proved vital in helping change the fate of children and in ushering in a better future for them.

    It was the scene of gloomy and misty cotton mills where children as young as six toiled for up to 12 hours a day that prompted U.S. lawmakers to end child labor in that country.

    It was the 1972 photo of a 9-year-old girl running naked and gruesomely burned that preceded renewed anti-war demonstrations in the United States and elsewhere in the world and led to the pull-out of American troops from Vietnam and an eventual end to war in that country.

    It was the story of vultures stalking starving kids who staggered on the parched and cracked savannahs of Africa that brought a sense and feeling of famine to households outside the continent and in return brought attention and, along with it, food aid to the needy.

    Media coverage does not just shed light on the dire side of children's life. It runs the complete gamut from misery to happiness, contrasting lives in which children today learn to cope with pain and enjoy freedom from cares in different parts of the world.

    The need for much more attention and action on such issues as poverty, violence, discrimination, suppression, abuse or exploitation is the indisputable and compelling fact driving this year's publicity campaign.

    The media worldwide, therefore, should endorse children as the proclaimed future of mankind by giving them their due in the hope of changing their welfare from bad to good, and then from good to better.

    Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel-winning poet from India, likened children’s welfare to paradise as seen in the eyes of children. With deep love, he said in his poem, "The Child Angel:"

    "Let them see your face, my child, and thus know the meaning of all things;

    Let them love you and thus love each other."

    These lines were for both children and adults, and for those who have done their share for children's welfare.

    News is said to be perishable, but the profound messages conveyed in this campaign and actions it inspires hereafter to promote children's welfare must be long remembered.