Weekly Review - May 14, 2002: Harper's Magazine A 13-year-old girl from Bolivia named Gabriela Azurdy Arrieta opened the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children. "We want a world fit for children," she said in her speech, "because a world fit for us is a world fit for everyone." The United States, the Vatican, and several Arab countries disrupted the proceedings by pushing anti-abortion and sexual abstinence agendas. America also blocked a statement calling for a ban on the execution of children, a provision of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which only the United States and Somalia have failed to ratify. "We are trying to lead the world," said one American official.