Statement by Nelson Mandela on building a global
partership for children

Johannesburg - 6 May 2000

Ladies and Gentlemen

Graca and I are proud to be here today with our esteemed friend Carol Bellamy
the Executive Director of the United Nations Children Fund to announce our
commitment to work closely with her and her respected organization on a cause we
hold most dear to our hearts - the rights of the children and adolescents of
this world to live safe from violence and exploitation free of poverty and
discrimination and to grow healthy and strong.

Here in my beloved country where people once divided by apartheid now work
together in the name of justice Graca and I pledge our energies to building a
global partnership for children of leaders from every sector and every calling
who share a dogged determination to change the way the world sees our children
and the way the world treats our children.

Our purpose is to get specific commitments from these leaders and specific
results.

We will be insistent gracious yes but unyielding as we make phone calls write
letters provide consultations and make speeches on behalf of children - pressing
a wide circle of leaders from business civil society and governments to rethink
what they do every day to better the lives of children. And whatever it is they
do today we will coax them to do more tomorrow.

We will urge these leaders to take their turn in reaching out to a wider
circle still inviting cajoling carrying each other along in an unprecedented
international movement a collective global force that will herald the rights of
children and act to ensure them.

This global partnership will be guided in its work by the Convention on the
Rights of the Child that luminous living document that enshrines the rights of
every child without exception to a life of dignity and self-fulfilment.

We are not seeking nor will we accept vague promises. We will challenge
enlightened government leaders to join us and turn their words into deeds,
enforce the laws enact the policies and search out the excluded children - the
girl child the poor child the one little one with disabilities the one from the
wrong tribe wrong caste - and find the ways to embrace them.

We will ask innovators in the business world to put their unique abilities to
work for children. Use distribution networks that deliver cola drinks to the
most remote towns and get textbooks and vaccines there first. Share profits
share talent share advertising space - all in the name of children.

We will call upon leaders in academia the media and other sectors to join
with us to ensure that the world honours its obligation to children. Be ever
vigilant hold governments accountable struggle for peace and justice. Do not let
up for a moment for there is no circumstance in which the neglect or abuse of
children can ever be tolerated.

And to all who would be leaders we will issue the challenge that if met will
speak louder than any document, reach out to children and adolescents themselves
involve them engage them and listen to what they have to say. Make certain that
the global partnership for children includes children.

This new partnership for children builds on the promises made nearly a decade
ago at the World Summit for Children when national leaders from every part of
the world made a solemn commitment to ensure the well-being of al societies by
giving high priority to the rights of children to their survival and to their
development. Those leaders pledged to act together in international cooperation
as well as in their respective countries to enhance child health and pre-natal
care to promote optimal child growth and development's to work toward
strengthening the role and status of women's and to mount a global attack on
poverty.

In the ensuing years some objectives - but far from all - of that noble
agenda have come to pass.

Now at the dawn of the 21st Century we have a unique opportunity to fulfil
the remaining commitments of the World Summit for Children - while
simultaneously tackling new and emerging problems including poverty HIV/AIDS and
the scourge of armed conflict.

In this world in which we have the means to cure many of the cancers that
only a decade ago were considered lethal surely we are able to vaccinate all
children against child killing diseases. In this world of such abundance surely
we can find the means to assure that no child will go hungry no pregnant woman
will be too weak to survive childbirth and that every one of the nearly 6
million children who will die next year because of malnutrition will be saved.

Surely in a world where communication technologies let some children exchange
messages across oceans in seconds we can provide every child with a basic
education of the very best quality. In this world of such invention there can be
no excuse for not ensuring that all our children will have the knowledge and
skills for success and the capabilities to work with others reach their full
potential and transform their society.

Surely when children and adolescents in every part of the world can name
their favourite soft drink running shoe or sports we are able to ensure that
they will have access to the information they need to stay healthy. In a world
that so often decries the apathy of its youth we can open our arms for the
millions of adolescents eager to contribute their new ideas and bounding
enthusiasm. And surely we can stand by the commitments that nearly every
government in the world has made to children in signing the Convention on the
Rights of the Child.

Governments remain the primary actors in addressing such challenges - and
indeed in playing a leading role in all development cooperation while involving
the poor and the young themselves as full participants.

But now amid growing economic interdependence among nations we see a new
global reality with additional protagonists including non-governmental
organisations grassroots groups private enterprise the business community and
other diverse elements of civil society.

These new actors possess both the knowledge and the resources to make a
difference. Thus their involvement in a global partnership for children is not
only desirable - it is vital. The task before us is to bring them together.

But time is short - for if we do not act now in concert the brushfire crises
that are proliferating around the world may yet become an uncontrollable
conflagration.

Graca and I hope that we can act as catalysts helping to persuade leaders of
government and civil society at every level to recognise that if we want a more
just equitable and thriving world we need to invest in children now.

This must include efforts that take full account of the immense peril that
HIV/AIDS and armed conflict poses to every aspect of child survival - and the
recognition that global poverty which has already consigned some 3 billion
people to living on less than $2 a day - half of them children - is not only a
moral outrage but a profound political and economic threat to the whole world.
The knowledge the resources and the strategies all exist to make this a better
world for all children - and Graca and I are convinced that if we start now we
can build a truly global alliance to bring it about.

To dear Ms. Bellamy to UNICEF and to the children of the world we say, you
have our word to help.

To our friends and colleagues we say, expect our call. To you here today who
have afforded us your kind attention, thank you.

Issued by: UNICEF

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