Holding Adults Accountable for the World's Children

A teenager calls for a seat at the U.N.

"It takes a village to save a child," sang Raffi, the renowned singer of children's songs. No, Raffi was not offering a soundbite from a Hillary Clinton book tour, but a plea for the world's youth, before an audience who had come to the State of the World Forum to listen to a panel speak about the ills that plague the world's children.

Craig Kielburger, Founder, Free the Children

Craig Kielburger, Founder, Free the Children

That message was most passionately communica-
ted by a 17-year-old Canadian, who wowed not only the audience but his fellow panelists, including Queen Noor of Jordan; Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF; Primatologist Jane Goodall; Raffi; and Children's Defense Fund president Marian Wright Edelman.

Craig Kielburger hardly has time for rhetoric when it comes to the problems of the world's children, because he is busier than most 17-year-olds. Busy running an organization. His own.

VIDEO EXCERPT FROM KIELBURGER


	Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF

As an advocate, Kielburger started at a very young age. He first began defending the rights of children when he was 12, after reading about the murder of a Pakistani boy, Iqbal Masih—also 12—who was sold into bondage as a carpet weaver.

Founder and chairperson of Free The Children International, Kielburger, delivering an address on the "Endangered/Nurtured Child," spoke of the responsibility of governments to reach across boundaries to eradicate poverty, hunger, disease and a myriad of other ills that plague the world's children.


	Primatologist Jane Goodall

"I want to make a plea," he said. "That is, to hold governments accountable to their promise to the world's children as outlined in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. We've been talking about globalization. But why do the IMF and the World Bank hold governments accountable for bad loans, but cannot hold governments accountable for their policies to the world's children—our most important asset?

"The technology we have is an extraordinarily important tool," said Kielburger. "A movement like Free the Children would not have been possible 10, 15 years ago. All of our meetings took place over the Internet. We are an Internet-based organization, but at the same time what we see on a global scale is a growing gap between the rich and the poor, and that gap is now been added to with technology.

"And that is not only between countries. That's even within countries. And so one of the greatest challenges for society today is to actively work to empower people—especially to empower young people to use technology as a means of giving a voice to the voiceless and, most importantly, as a means of combating poverty and oppression in this world."

The task is a daunting one, when one considers the following:

In a $30 trillion global economy, 1.2 billion people—a quarter of the human race—are living in conditions of almost unimaginable suffering and want.
Between 600 million and 700 million children—about 40 percent of all those in the developing world—are currently struggling to survive on less than one dollar a day.
Easily preventable diseases—pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and measles among them—account for the deaths of nearly eleven million children under the age of five each year.
Education is also a major heartache, and the outlook continues to be grim, with nearly one billion people considered illiterate, and more than 110 million children not in school.
Approximately 1.3 billion people lack safe water.
More than half of the developing world's population of 2.6 billion people are without access to adequate sanitation.

The story of the Pakistani boy that captured Kielburger's imagination and dramatically changed his life was as tragic as it was inspirational.

Masih was bonded at the age of four to a village carpet maker and spent six years working 14 hours a day, six days a week. He was beaten time and again for refusing to work and trying to escape.

At age ten, he escaped with the help of the Bonded Liberation Labor Front (BLLF), an NGO based in Lahore, Pakistan, which not only secured his freedom, but found him a place in school.

In many ways, Kielburger's remarkable ascent has mirrored that of the much-honored Masih, who was a child whose sense of justice catapulted him to international fame after he became an advocate for the anti-slavery movement.

By his twelfth birthday, Masih had helped to liberate some 3,000 children at textile and brick factories, tanneries and steelworks—industries at the heart of the Pakistani economy. He then capitalized on his celebrity status to prod millions of consumers in the United States and Europe not to buy products of doubtful origin from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.

Masih was never able to savor the full magnitude of his work, because five years ago he was murdered by an assailant thought to be linked to the nation's carpet industry. Like his achievements before, his death was reported extensively by the world media.

Touched by Masih's story, Kielburger formed Free the Children. Spanning more than 20 countries, its mission is to free children from poverty and exploitation and to empower young people to become leaders in their communities, nationally and internationally.

Free the Children has initiated various projects worldwide, including the opening of schools and rehabilitation centers for children; the creation of alternative sources of revenue for poor families to free children from hazardous work; leadership programs for youth and projects linking children on an international level.

Keilburger himself, somewhat of an international celebrity, and media darling, is a much-sought-after speaker who has traveled to more than 30 countries, visiting street and working children, and speaking out in defense of children's rights.

In the U.S., where children often also find themselves under siege, Kielburger has powerful adult allies like Children's Defense Fund president, Marian Wright Edelman, who spoke of a problem of alarming proportions. "Since 1979, in our nation, we've lost over 80,000 American children to gunfire," she said. "That's 20,000 more than we lost to Vietnam. Guns take 10 American lives each day....

"I am glad we provide every 60-year-old with Social Security; it's a shame we don't provide every six-year-old with security. There is an extraordinary amount of people who would protect guns over children. We've got to make sure that we protect children instead of guns. We still lead the world in military spending and exports. We spend more in one week in America on the military, in this post cold war era, than we spend annually on Head Start to get children ready for school."

Worldwide, the largest number of people being killed in armed conflicts are children, according to recent U.N. estimates.

The U.N. Security Council reminded the world, earlier this year, that it is both immoral and illegal to make children the victims or protagonists of war. It has helped to maintain awareness of the unacceptability of turning children into soldiers, of forcing millions of children and women to flee their homes, and of subjecting children to forced labor, sexual abuse and the pressure to commit atrocities. But Kielburger and others are asking for the kind of commitment that will finally make a difference.

Said Kielburger: "This is a challenge to all the world leaders—the 155 heads of states gathered for the Millennium Summit here in New York, to all the heads of state gathered for the State of the World Forum—to truly show their commitment to the world's children, when they are at the U.N., to set aside a vacant seat on the U.N. Security Council.

"When heads of state come together and make decisions ranging from sanctions to bombing, they'll remember the voice of the lost element of democracy—that sector of society that nowhere in the world has a voice, a vote or economic clout, then remember that their actions directly affect the children. I also challenge the international community to believe in young people, to believe in children but, most importantly, please don't underestimate who we are, and what we can do, because our generation may just surprise you."

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