This report on the well-being of the world's children focuses on the issue of child labor and its impact on children's lives. Chapter 1 provides a historical context for children's rights and highlights the need to guarantee the civil, social, economic, and political rights of children. The chapter shows how the world's course toward peace, equality, development, and justice can be helped by the conviction expressed in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child that children have the same spectrum of rights as adults. Chapter 2 gives an overview of child labor, its practice in developing and industrialized countries, its origins, the importance of basic education as a deterrence to child labor, and potential actions to prevent the practice. It proposes six steps to end child labor: (1) immediate elimination of hazardous and exploitative child labor; (2) provision of free and compulsory education; (3) wider legal protection; (4) birth registration of all children; (5) data collection and monitoring of child labor; and (6) codes of conduct and procurement policies. Chapter 3 provides statistics, such as those on child mortality, immunization, maternal mortality, malnutrition, and school enrollment that chart each nation's progress towards achieving the goals for children set at the 1990 World Summit for Children. (Contains about 100 references.) (Author/KDFB)