Dear Sir,
My heartfelt thanks of your kind invitation to be the special
at the 3rd International Conference of Chief Justice of
the World on Article 51 (c) of the Constitution of India,
to be held in Lucknow on 6 to 8 December 2002.
I feel highly honoured to have received your invitation
but I regret to have to apologize for not being able to
accept it due to unbreakable commitments in the country.
I would like to express my appreciation
and support to your Conference devoted to the world’s
two billion children, requesting the support of World Judiciary
to ensure a safe future for all the children of the world,
born and yet-to-be-born.
A child is a human being. It should have
all the fundamental human rights. Children are born as free
beings and must have equal opportunity of a dignified life,
irrespective or race, colour of skin, sex, mother tongue,
religion, political conviction, nationality, social status
or birth. They have the right to life, love, freedom and
security, as enshrined in the Declaration of Human Rights.
The very realisation of children’s greet vulnerability
to and non-responsibility for growing violence and abuse
in the world intensifies the responsibility of adults to
enlarge the space of security and undisturbed development
of children into complete and healthy individuals. Although
the importance, especially moral, of the Declaration of
the Rights of Children cannot be disputed, the fact that
the violence against children is not decreasing is a major
defeat for us all, in our responsibility for the future
of mankind and for the future of life. Mere declarations
are not enough. Our own awareness daily news, the findings
of UNICEF and of organisations of civil society dealing
with protection of human rights convince us of that.
The data known to all of us concerning the cruel fate of
children in religious and ethic conflicts are terrible.
Children injured in war, who will never be able to grow
into healthy adults, children into whose hands adults have
pushed weapons, children who have been helpless witnesses
of the horrors of war, for whom this will be the only memory
of their childhood. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda,
East Timor, Sierra Leone are tragic testimony of the fate
of children in the mindless world of adults.
Only concrete actions count. The Slovene State and Slovene
Philanthropy, an organisation of Slovene civil society,
have founded a regional centre for psychosocial help to
children affected by armed conflicts in the region of Southeast
Europe. The ideas and plans of the merging regional centre
are professional, ethical and realistic, Slovenia has similarly
founded an International Centre for Demining as the major
victims of mines in the region are children. The two centres
have professional staff and projects and raise donor founds
for their activities. I invite you to discover more about
the activities of those centres and to support them.
Unfortunately, children are victims not only of war violence
and conflicts between the countries. They are often victims
of unregulated and undemocratic relations within individual
countries including the violence.
Many things are happening which give us warming that the
present times are both merciless and without though out
for children in distress. That is also why, as adults, we
have the obligation to listen to them.
It is in this sense that I would like to express my acknowledgement
and support to what your School has been doing in trying
to ensure a safe future for the world‘s children.
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