KHOMSAN Sangsuemoon rarely leaves his home in Chiang Rai's Mae Chan district, let alone dream about attending an international meeting abroad.  A grade-eight student from Mae Chan Wittayakom school,  Khomsan was chosen from among six candidates all over the country and the region to represent Aids orphans, along  with a teenage girl from Uganda, at the Aids Orphans Symposium at the United Nations  Headquarters building in New York today -- World Aids Day.
      The event, organised jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Joint Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS), the National Black Leadership Commission on Aids (a US-based Aids non-governmental organisation) and the White House Office of National Aids Policy, aims to draw world attention to the plight of close to 13 million children orphaned by HIV/Aids.
      "I am very excited but not scared," the quiet 14-year-old said. "Doctor Weera (his chaperone) says I should speak clearly and look into the audience's eyes," he added with a rare smile.
      Among his 800-member audience at the UN headquarters today will be UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, US First Lady Hillary Clinton, the Reverend Jesse Jackson,  former South African president Nelson Mandela and Queen Noor of Jordan.
      Khomsan was chosen by UNICEF, which provides scholarships through district-based projects for children affected by HIV/Aids in the Aids-affected districts in the North, to make the voice of the "children left behind" heard at the international forum.  What Khomsan and his Ugandan colleague will tell the meeting is the plight that millions of children like them now face. 

      "Aids has killed the two people I love most -- my parents. There will be no one beside me to share my joy in my success, if any. I do not know how far I can go in my education," reads the paper the boy is going to present.
      The only son of the family, Khomsan never saw his mother, who died when he was 11 months old.
      "I always envy anyone who has a mother. I wish I could have a chance to say 'I love you, mom'," he says in his paper.
      His father died of Aids when he was 12, after being hospitalised for three days. Khomsan had just completed his primary school.
      "On the day that we collected our school report cards, my friends had both a mom and  dad with them. Me, no one. Only my grandmother was there. I was so desperate that I  could not help but cry."
      Khomsan's world crumbled again when his grandmother, whom he called mother, died  last year. He is now supported financially by his uncle, without whose support and that of  UNICEF, he would have little hope for the future. He is also lucky that he was well-supported by friends and the community.
      Khomsan will ask the international community to do the same for other children and  people affected by HIV/Aids, as well as otherwise disadvantaged children.
      "Children must be entitled to nationality and all the basic needs and development, and to  be protected from any kind of exploitation," he says in his paper.
      Khomsan was chosen from Asia and the girl from Africa because of the magnitude of the Aids problem in these two continents. HIV-positive people in Sub-Saharan Africa make up close to 70 per cent of the global total of 33.6 million.
      Thailand, meanwhile, has the highest number of Aids orphans in Asia. In Khomsan's Mae Chan district alone, there are about 700 children affected by HIV/Aids. Dr Weera  Isaratanan of the district's Project for Children Affected by Aids, said about 200 of them had lost both parents.
      UNAIDS has estimated that by the end of the year 2000, about 13 million children altogether will have lost their mother or both parents to Aids, and 10.4 million of them will still be below the age of 15.
      What Khomsan would like to ask for the children who share his fate is simple -- and the same request of about one million HIV-positive in the country: "some support and opportunity".