Investments in adolescents, a vital economic and social building block in most societies, are crucial in the developing world, where a rising proportion of the population is under the age of 24. At the same time, economic growth that comes about when a rising proportion of the population is of working age. When a country can productively employ these workers, they can provide resources to support the needs of those under 15 and over 60. The recently articulated and widely confirmed Millennium Development Goals along with the broadly adopted Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child provide a framework of values and desirable actions with respect to children and adolescents. None of the go