Names in the News : Audrey Hepburn in Plea for Children

WASHINGTON — Actress Audrey Hepburn appealed for help for the world’s poor children today, telling Congress they were among the hardest-hit victims of the Third World debt crisis.

“Children are too fragile to wait until the economic crisis is past,” the star of the films “My Fair Lady” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” told a House Appropriations subcommittee. Hepburn was appearing as a volunteer for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

UNICEF Executive Director James Grant told the House Select Committee on Hunger that the organization estimated that at least 500,000 young children died in the last year as a result of a slowing down or reversal of economic progress in the developing world.

The Academy Award-winning actress, who was born in Belgium in 1929, said she had been “one of those children of war-ravaged Europe to receive help from UNICEF.” She said the Third World debt crisis is hurting children rather than the military and other interests, a situation she said is “an outrage against a large section of humanity.”