Policy & Practice: Soapbox - The next generation deserves a say onglobal issues

So if it takes you only three minutes to read this article, that's 60 children who have died of preventable causes.

It doesn't have to be this way. Something can be done, and 2005 is the year to make progress in Africa.

The C8 Children's Forum runs from 3-5 July and is a great opportunity for young people to make recommendations on issues the G8 leaders should be discussing. These include education, HIV/Aids, poverty and the Make Poverty History themes of trade, aid and debt.

To have young people involved in discussing these issues is very important because, if you think about it, we are the next generation, the generation that is going to take the world forward. So we should surely have a say in what is going to directly affect us. Involving young people from developing countries like Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Lesotho, who have direct experience of the issues being discussed, will make the voice of C8 even more powerful.