by Razia Sultan Ismail

the right to grow up free of fear; the right to a dignified and wholesome life; the right to recieve a proper education; the right to a healthy growth environment




















© Margaret Murray / WCC

We gave development into the hands of shopkeepers, and war and peace into the heads of arms manufactures




















Angola © Peter Williams / WCC




















Brazil © Pierre Virot / WHO



















The legacy of hate education does not go away by laying down a rifle or switching off a game.




















© Pierre Virot / WHO



















The world will not change by our being kind to children. If the world changes, we will be kind, and fair, to children too.




















Brazil © Bob Scott / WCC

What is the condition of child rights? It is a little like what Jean-Jacques Rousseau said: "Man is born free, and everywhere is found in chains." A UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, now 10 years old, has been signed, ratified and accepted by every nation under the sun except two (the United States of America, and Somalia). Among those entrusted with the responsibility of guiding society, there exist religious people, some of whom speak out on the need for humanity to defend what is good in the world. Yet everywhere, we find children in peril for one reason or another.

The formation of a global network of religions for children is an initiative to protect and defend the best interests of the child. In vowing to secure this protection for every child, such a network takes upon itself a difficult challenge. For what does the well-being of children imply?

The initiative is the brainchild of the Arigatou Foundation of Japan, a Buddhist movement pledged to public service. The "First Forum" meeting called by the Arigatou Foundation in May 2000 in Tokyo launched the network and its message. It focussed on four key rights of every child: the right to grow up free of fear; the right to a dignified and wholesome life; the right to receive a proper education; the right to a healthy growth environment.

In the context of these four, and the fact that few children can be assured fair opportunity to enjoy these rights, the May forum challenged religious people to consider what should be expected of them. The forum yielded the Tokyo statement and declaration of purpose. It also posed many difficult questions.

Now the questions come to us, here in India, where so many of the world's children, and so many of the world's poor, struggle to live with at least a modicum of security and dignity. If the condition of children is unacceptable, what should be expected of religious people?

Is there something such people could do that they have not already tried? Are religious people miracle workers? For what is it if not transformation that is needed? And for this, will not all people who have any faith in anything have to upset and upturn their understanding of what is acceptable in our world ? In the interests of any child, and especially the least served and least supported.

Our enquiry could focus on whether every child should enjoy improved and sure access to health, nutrition, education, shelter and all the other facets of care, as well as protection from insecurity - no matter what the state of the world at large may be. Surely children deserve this much.

But for people of faith, the enquiry could as well begin with the hypothesis that it is not only the little world of the child's immediate survival, health and safety that has to be changed; it is the world's overall character that cries out to be rescued and transformed. So our understanding of what is acceptable in our world would then mean the world not just as it affects children, but for everyone.

The present condition and future prospects for children depend on far more than the UN Convention that has been written for them. Much else must change. Otherwise we help our children through their childhood years but leave them a damaged world to live in.

What is gained for either the world or its people by ensuring some children good food, secure shelter and a cheerful schoolroom, and filling their minds with hatred and disdain for anyone unlike themselves ?

The question expands the canvas beyond the specific boundaries within which we perceive the child. But it is necessary to position the issue in reality. The child lives in a world, not in a separate space. The world is beset by many sicknesses, and four of its worst ills are hatred, arrogance, greed and division. If the world cannot be helped to seek a cure for these, humanity will fade and human rights will founder.

The pursuit of child rights is thus part of a larger effort for a deeper cause. Development with justice cannot be based on feeding the greed of a few but disregarding the needs of the many. Peace cannot be gained if the weak must compromise their hopes. A sick world cannot protect its children.

The world needs renewal, not repair.

So religious people, priests or lay believers, must understand the implications of being asked for a dedication to practising faith for the child's sake.

There is a tendency for religious leaders to commit themselves and their congregations to praying for the oppressed and the deprived. Perhaps it should be recognised that there are other actions requiring the religious persons' energies. So the next question arises: what should religious persons do by way of practice, for the benefit of children ?

If they can assemble in support of children's rights, religious people must also find the capacity to move forward together to cross new boundaries. The capacity - and the anger. It is time for people of faith to see that there is cause for anger, and become angry.

The basic fact that conferences need to be called to ask these questions, that a global network of the kind initiated by the Arigatou Foundation should be at all necessary, that special conventions should be drawn up in defence of children, is an acknowledgement of the need for anger. This is the very kind of anger that moved nations and people through the 1990 World Summit on Children, the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the 1993 Conference on Human Rights, the 1995 World Summit for Social Development and Fourth World Conference on Women - and was frustrated at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development.

It is the same kind of anger that makes people like Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela give up whatever might be their conventional career paths and move instead to upset the status quo. It is the same kind of anger that can impel ordinary people to confront the status quo because it is so manifestly unjust to so many.

It was probably Gandhi who called this "constructive anger." Such anger is necessary. Despair is no use; responsible citizens cannot yet be ready to succumb to despair anyway. And passive hope is also no use. Even when the times demand it, bad things do not go away by themselves. Prayer is one of the priorities that the Global Network advocates: prayer for children who suffer, prayer for children who die before their time. Prayer is an expression of faith as well as hope. But it cannot suffice. Faith, like justice and honesty, has to be practiced.

Passive hope ranks high among the risks when- ever justice eludes society. It keeps people inert when they should be mobilising. And it can delude.

Another risk is that of limiting one's vision to a narrow understanding of what some people in the United Nations call "do-able". This ugly word makes people accept partial justice. Equally, it can make them focus their energies on symptoms instead of whole issues and underlying causes. Dealing with symptoms does not suffice. The real sickness persists, and recurs.

People who perceive the need for a revolution do not dream or plan at a strictly do-able level. They have to at least dream the seemingly impossible. A genuine vision sets new horizons. It redefines the destination. It is for something like this that humanity must strive.

The lesson concealed in the plight of the child is essentially this. If we do not strive to radically change the status quo, we have condemned this 21st Century from its birth, and sentenced our children to a bleak and bitter future. It is a dangerous moment in our lives, and in the history of our world. We cannot just hope to pass through it. We must become constructively angry.

At what should our anger be directed? To put it very simply, at the fact that development has become a business matter instead of a matter of justice. At the fact that war and peace - and the choice between them - have become a business matter. In both arenas, people have become a commodity. This is unacceptable. Why do we accept it? Are children a commodity? Are people, the poor, a commodity? Or consumers? Or cannon fodder? Why do we accept that they be considered as such?

How strongly do thinking people, people of faith, people of conscience, feel about this? And how strong do they feel themselves at the prospect of acting for change? Such action would have to be a crusade to achieve a new political and social will in the world. And this could only be done by active moral force. A dangerous proposition, far beyond a call for immunisation or opening a school in a slum, or introducing kindness into an orphanage.

Religious people are at risk in joining a genuine global network of religions for children. Joining a global network of this kind is not a journey into tranquillity. Just the opposite.

The world's past performance in making the planet a better home for our children is not good. As the world's six billion inhabitants taste the 21st Century, one third of them do so in abject poverty. There are more refugees and migrants among them than ever before. It is a moment to turn back for a clear look at what we have done and see what has brought us to this present day.

The 20th Century was not notable for its adherence to either compassion or justice. It was a century of great discovery, and many marvellous milestones of knowledge. But was it a century of wisdom? Was it a century of love? So many pages of the book of the 1990s record mistakes and misdeeds.

We tried, twice, to unite the world's nations. But how many times did we go to war, in big and little battlefields? We created the phenomenon of mass refugee populations, and made portraits of starvation and high-tech "smart" bombardment into new art forms for families to enjoy as they sit before their TV sets at home. We comforted ourselves with occasional charity, but where was empathy? We found the word "solidarity", but failed to recognise what it means.

We gave development into the hands of shopkeepers, and war and peace into the hands of arms manufacturers. We adopted the idea that a unifying world order could be born, but are condemning the new infant to malformation and sickness because we have mistaken "global" to mean the same thing as "international". We did not perceive the crucial difference - that "international" states the character and possibility of coexistence without surrendering individuality.

We did not perceive, or it was convenient not to. The sovereignty and integrity of many nations is at stake because of debt, because of economic or political pressure. Today, maps and boundaries are on the gambling tables again, and the dice seem to be loaded. The traders' invasions gain speed and strength meanwhile. And their advertising is so good that we even welcome them.

What must we do now?

Children and adults alike are in jeopardy. Livelihoods are being lost. So are identities. Countries whose own sovereignty is unassailable say nationalism with borders is out of date. Who will preach the UN Charter to them? If the United Nations is tottering, who will rediscover the moral principles of justice, and coexistence, and give voice to them? Is it not we - responsible citizens, religious persons, constructively angry people - who must do this?

What is the present condition of child rights? Since the early 1980s, world reports from UNICEF provide annual reminders of unmet needs, some gains and many gaps, new risks. The challenge list persists: hunger, primary education for all, polio eradication, eliminating measles, overcoming Vitamin A deficiency, combating anaemia, beating maternal mortality and low birth-weight, re-focussing family planning, salt iodisation, access to sanitation, HIV/AIDS, forced labour, exploitation and abuse.

Since 1996, UNICEF has highlighted the problems children face in industrialised countries, with absent fathers, sexual exploitation, solo mothers struggling on the poverty line, mounting crime and violence, and child abandonment. Also in 1996, it announced its "anti-war agenda", underlining the growing risks to children in conflict zones. In 1998, it reported the fifth consecutive year of "aid fatigue" in the industrial nations, and falling figures in development assistance. As the 1990s ended, UNICEF data showed much of Africa, Asia and Latin America living on less than a dollar a day. It also reported 27 per cent of Russian children and 26 per cent of US children living in poor families, and 21 per cent in Britain and Italy. About 540 million children are reported at risk in areas burdened by conflict, post-war insecurities or natural disasters.

Now UNICEF is calling on nations and societies to espouse a "new global agenda for children". How can this come into force when the global agenda for adults remains unchanged?
[…]

The United Nations' five-year and 10-year reviews of development have come and gone. On population, on women, on education, on the eradication of poverty through social development. The new documents recording review outcomes, updated promises, deferred deadlines and deflated funding pledges sound as hollow as they are. Meanwhile, the condition of children can be seen in statistics of continuing suffering, want and denial. In some countries, an eight-year-old child can be forced to testify in court, in others, eight years is old enough for prostitution. In one, under-five mortality from diarrhoea and water-rela-ted gastric ailments has risen 1,400 per cent in 10 years because of economic sanctions.

There is published data on the places where little boys are conscript soldiers and little girls are slave labour in the sex trade. All of these terrible facts and figures are true. Some of them are true because of poverty and rising debt burdens, and economic constraints that some societies and nations face. Some of them are the bitter fruit of exploitative power politics within and across borders. Some of them are true because of persistently negative culture and tradition. The data cited here is only illustrative of the condition of children in different parts of the world.

The advocacy role of religious leadership in pushing for changes in law, policy, programme and investment in these areas is self-evident. Informed pressure is possible and necessary.

But these poor conditions are effects, not causes. The little boy soldiers forced into uniform and taught to kill, just like the children who play video war games, are products of societies that teach them how to hate. The legacy of hate education does not go away by laying down a rifle or switching off a game. Little children who only watch warfare on television in the safety of their homes are learning that it is right for "bad people" to die for their sin of being "other". The most sinister world order is not new: it is the order of "us" and "them". We see this in the international arena, and we see it at home. And there is never any room in our chosen space for any of "them".

Does it not therefore become essential to look at the whole issue of the child's condition as a facet of the human condition, position it in the frame of values, and measure it as a spin-off of the basic issue of human worth?

The Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out four spheres for action: survival, development, protection and participation. But the essential terms are humanity, justice, respect and love. This is a normative frame that tells us how the inhabitants of Planet Earth might regard one another. This is the territory of religious people.
[… ]

The Convention on child rights also assumes, as do many contemporary international instruments and statutes, that adults will continue to clash between and among themselves. It assumes violence and the use of force. It assumes that might and material power will often prevail. It assumes race and class divisions and disparities. It then goes on to seek assurance that no matter how many heads are broken, and who oppresses whom, children should be protected from the worst effects. Conflict and brutality are not suitable for children.

Seen from the child survival standpoint, this is a life-saving, life-guarding approach. This may well be mature and realistic. But it can only result in patchwork solutions. For it evades value judgement. The world will not change by our being kind to children. If the world changes, we will be kind, and fair, to children too. It will change only when, and if, the four-fold frame of values is honoured and upheld. This is what religious people must address.

The principle of profit, with its side-bars of profitability, cost-effectiveness, economic viability and respect for market forces, has pushed aside the principle of well-being. Good management of development services is an undisputed need, but the social sector and the state's obligation to serve the people carry their own kinds of profit. Is the good health of a child profit? Is the money and time spent in a government clinic to save the life of a sickly infant born to impoverished parents in an overpopulated country cost-effective or profitable? Is it efficient and cost-effective for an education ministry to pay extra for a woman teacher to be posted to a remote village so that the little girls there can get five years of schooling? Is it more efficient to save that salary and let the girls learn cooking at home instead?

Is such investment profitable? Profitable to whom? Profitable in what sense? The question should really be: is it acceptable not to make such investments ? Justice - social, economic, political - has to be declared profitable. Who will make this declaration? People of faith have to have the courage to speak out.
[…]

Nations that have pledged to invest in their children can be handicapped by externally imposed econo- mic reforms that imperil their poorer citizens' livelihoods, and make a mockery of their socio-economic policies. The condition and the prospects for children's rights are affected by such factors. Many nations of the South tried to report this slide-back at the June 2000 UN five-year review of what happened to social development and poverty eradication since 1995. Many nations of the North have been deaf to these reports. Who will speak out for a restoration of justice to the development agenda? Is this not the task before people of good conscience?
[…]

It is in the realm of socio-cultural values and religious teaching that human rights, justice and love must be propagated… and have not been. The concept of one humanity is far more important than that of one economic order. This concept is critically linked to the concept of diversity. The equal worth of diverse peoples, cultures and systems is crucial to recognise. One humanity cannot mean that everyone should be the same and live uniform lives based on uniform rules, but that their value should be equal and equally acknowledged, and equally protected.

At the international level, the UN Charter is the instrument of protection - but only de jure today. The UN Covenant on the Right to Development exists, but has not risen to statutory force. The 1948 UN Declaration on Human Rights, its strength reinforced by the 1993 Vienna Conference, stands as the international safeguard for the equal and inalienable human rights and fundamental freedoms of the individual. But people oppress people, and nations oppress nations. Who speaks out? Who preaches and propagates equal worth, at any level? The hour has come to renew, or even create, the gospel of coexistence, without compromise.

In 1945, the new-born United Nations enshrined in proud stone the promise that we would convert swords into ploughshares. But we developed amazing and terrible new weapons instead. We promised to save the earth and its natural resources, but we allow the buying and selling of rain-forests, and the stealing of ownership of seeds from poor men's fields and trees. We kept up the claim that the pen is mightier than the sword but we discovered that we could slit our enemies' throats just as effectively by waging telecast wars that could damage and destroy by remote control. And we have continued to fight over who owns God, and who defiles His name - as if any of us had been given the divine right to decide this.

The Christian scriptures say that God's house has many mansions, suggesting room for all. The Muslim scripture tells us that God opens many doorways, suggesting that there may be many paths. Who preaches these texts? If we believe at all in the dream of harmony, we must do this. The Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, who have all have learned how to kill and who all profess divine dispensation, need to hear, and to relearn. The fat powers of the world, busy directing the liberalisation and globalisation of the thin nations, need to rediscover humility.
[…]

What should be expected of religious people? We face this challenging question not as religious leaders, although there may be some among us, but as ordinary men and women who believe in some force greater than themselves, divine or moral, and who strive to work for the good of others. People who refuse to give up an inner conviction that love and justice can prevail, and that there must be some way of safeguarding good and improving the world.
[… ]

In formulating a mandate for faith, knowledge or progress, the wellbeing of the child is a good measure of sincerity and worth. For a mandate that would serve children, there must be a set of non-negotiable principles for people-centred and just development, by which we could work. In 1998, the Baha'i International Community proposed three spiritually based indicators for development: equity and justice, unity in diversity, and gender equality. It called for adherence to trustworthiness, moral leadership and independent investigation of truth. It is a challenge and an obligation to place these in the balance with profitability, cost benefits and market wisdom. The fate of the world depends on how honestly it is done.

And again the question: what should be expected of religious people ? Words are never sufficient, yet the right words are necessary. Religious people must help to restore a vocabulary for justice and humanity and renew the validity of love and respect as serious principles for human attitudes and human dealings. They must join in the struggle to retrieve the world's affairs from the traders who have taken possession of them. They must re-state the fact that development must mean justice, that peace must mean respect for difference. In a world bristling with weapons of des-truction, the only armoury they can draw upon is moral force. Can people who uphold faith pledge to exert this?
[…]

The Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore once said: "Every child that is born comes into the world with the message that God has not yet despaired of mankind." His words have compelling immediacy. Today's people must not let the world continue to be such that God might well feel justified in despairing of the human race. The first action must be to re-link development with justice. Then religion and science will know their place and play their roles for the good of all humanity. The poor will regain hope and conquer poverty. And all our children will at last be safe.

Extracted from a concept statement and working paper of Razia Sultan Ismail, for a Policy Consultation, New Delhi, 21 December 2000.
Ms Razia Sultan Ismail is International Convenor and Charter Member of the Women's Coalition for Peace and Development and Former President of the World Young Women's Christian Association.