ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT CALLS FOR CONTINUED EFFORTS FOR CHILDREN IN STATEMENT COMMEMORATING UNICEF'S FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
Press Release
GA/9198
ICEF/1837
ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT CALLS FOR CONTINUED EFFORTS FOR CHILDREN IN STATEMENT COMMEMORATING UNICEF'S FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
19961211 Following is the statement made today by the President of the General Assembly, Razali Ismail (Malaysia), on the occasion of the celebration to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF):The fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations Children's Fund deservedly should be an occasion to take stock and recognize the many achievements of the Organization. Also, we need to remember the dedication and selfless service to the cause of UNICEF by stalwarts like the late James Grant. At a time when much of the United Nations is negatively under scrutiny, UNICEF has many successes to tell about changing attitudes, prospects and lives of children.
The protection and welfare of children all over the world, beyond politics and selectivity, must be the continuing purpose of UNICEF. Children are our future. All decisions that we make impact on them in some way. Children touch us in ways that can heal divisions between individuals, between groups, and help build bridges between countries. The instinct to protect and nurture them runs deep in all societies. It will be a strong indictment on societies and governments if children continue to be betrayed, the bloom of their promise blighted, their full potential unmet. We cannot in all conscience maintain that we have done everything within our power to protect the most basic of children's rights, the right to life, if millions of children are being killed violently, face bleak prospects, are conscripted into wars, and become victims of endless terror.
If children are to meet their full potential, society must provide them the best chance by fully investing in their education and by inculcating values of tolerance and pluralism. Resources, including financial, must be mobilized in the promotion of the necessary programmes and activities to this end. We must continue to agitate for greater expenditure on education and health care for our young rather, than increased outlay on military weapons. It is distressing to realize that when it comes to the crunch, governments are more concerned to support the rights of buying and selling arms than to protect the rights of people and children to live free from armed conflicts and violence.
- 2 - Press Release GA/9198 ICEF/1837 11 December 1996
The UNICEF has done well in identifying and mobilizing resources. However, in a world of depleting resources and the drying up of humanitarian impulses, serious questions arise as to how to resolve the question of different institutions competing for contracting resources. While UNICEF has made changes in children's health and well-being, the absence of resources to tackle the root causes of poverty and marginalization places into focus contradictions in terms of global commitments and purposes.
A distressing concern with regard to the state of children today is the issue of the exploitation of children. The use of children as actors, targets and hostages in war and violent conflict is so base in its violation of universal values that our conscience should be provoked to the highest degree of moral outrage. Child labour, by way of exploiting children in desperate situations, is highly objectionable. Children in these situations are subject to physical, mental and sexual abuse. The crushing effects of poverty and dire straits are brought to bear on children as victims. However that issue should not be turned into the politicization of the rights of children to be used as weapons on selected countries. The international community must be honest enough to recognize that poverty and the absence of development, in the context of an unjust world, leaves millions of children anguished, maimed and orphaned in poor countries. For as long as the inequities of those that have and those that have not are perpetuated, pontifications of goodwill solve precious little.
I believe the international community can find the compassion and tenacity required to protect children all over the world. It requires sacrifice of time, energy and commercial profit. It also requires a dispassionate acceptance of a global commitment to overcome poverty and marginalization. We must deal with the crisis of our conscience -- the disparity between the safety, comfort and numerous material luxuries some children enjoy, and the millions of their contemporaries who face terrible prospects, with neither option nor choice.
We are all responsible. We, as parents, adults, governments and in civil society, must play our part in helping make society aware that abuses of children's rights, in whatever form, are unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue. We must reject the notion that exploitation of children only takes place in the developing world. It happens all around us. Our lifestyles, and the choices we make everyday, all have an impact on someone, on a child somewhere.
* *** *