Kindly allow me to express my profound gratitude for this rare opportunity that I have been given to address this awe-inspiring gathering of eminent personalities from around the globe, the creme de la creme of world judiciaries.
Indeed this is the first time that I have been asked to address a gathering of this nature and to do so with my feet on the soil of beautiful India, the mother of democracies.
This is not the first trip I have made to India though, but the second. My first visit was in September this year, when, as the Vice-Chair of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), I attended the historic 53rd Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference, in New Delhi.
It seems befitting therefore, that whereas in September, this country hosted a group of world members and heads of the legislature, this time it hosts an even bigger, world wide body of members and heads of the judiciary.
This can only symbolise the degree to which this country is determined to go, to ensure international compliance to the rule of law, good governance and a better world for all. This leads one to hope that perhaps one day soon; this country will complete the cycle and host a team of the world heads of the executive, the world leaders themselves.
Distinguished Participants,
My invitation to this historic event was most specific in indicating that I was to make a few remarks on the theme, "Empower the International Court of Justice to safeguard the future of the world's two billion children and generations yet to be born."
My intervention on this matter is inspired by the words of the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's statement that,
"Only as we move closer to realising the rights of all children will countries move closer to their goals of development and peace."
It is a well documented fact that during armed conflict - be it civilian as in Sudan or cross boarder, as in the former Iran-Iraq war - children are vulnerable to displacement, abuse, sexual exploitation and recruitment as child soldiers; that armed conflict separates children from their families, increases their risk of exploitation and exposes them to violence. Conflict is without doubt, the best breeding ground for all the tragedies that befall the world's children. Secretary General Kofi Annan has also been heard to assert that:
"Conflict and violence rob them (children) of a secure family life; betray their trust and their hope."
As we are gathered here now, eighteen countries of the world are engaged in what is referred to as significant armed conflict. This, most unfortunately, implies that there is other less significant on-going armed conflict elsewhere in the world. UNICEF provides rather shocking statistics on the plight of children in regions of armed conflict. Allow me to quote but a few of these:
" Half of the victims of armed conflict are children;
" 20 million children have been forced to flee their homes because of conflict; One million children have been orphaned or separated from their families; An estimated 300,000 child soldiers are involved in armed conflict worldwide; and
" Between 8,000 and 10,000 are killed or maimed by landmines every year.
" Two million children have died as a result of armed conflict over the last decade;
In the area of HIV / AIDS, we are all now fully aware that children do not need to have HIV / AIDS to be affected by it. Once one or both parents are infected, the fabric of the child's life disintegrates. The figures here are equally alarming:
" About 15.2 million children have been orphaned by AIDS, eighty percent of them in southern Africa;
" It is estimated that, close to 18.2 million African children will have lost both parents to AIDS by 2010;
We have children living in abject poverty, deprived of their rights to survival, health and nutrition, education and protection from harm, abuse, exploitation and discrimination. We are told that over one billion children are severely deprived of at least one of the essential goods and services.
Distinguished Participants,
This is the type of world we have created for our children; this is the future present we have prepared for our yet to be born babies. I am only highlighting these figures to put in perspective the impact of inaction and procrastination on our part, on the lives of the world's children.
We meet in Lucknow today, five years after the historic UN General Assembly's Special Session on Children of 2002, whose specific mandate was to discuss children's issues. It will be recalled that hundreds of children participated as members of official delegations. This session marked the first time that world leaders committed themselves to building "A World Fit for Children".
Five years seems like the most opportune time to reflect, pause and ponder and examine what progress, if any, has been made in creating the utopia world that UNICEF believes is possible for our children. The world of love, care and protection, in a family environment, with ample scope to survive, grow, develop and participate.
Whereas the above statistics informs us otherwise, we are advised that there have been some positive developments in this regard. We learn that there has been growing recognition by states, of the need to create a protective environment for children.
Our respective countries have passed new acts, orders and degrees, on the rights, protection and welfare of children and in most cases have ratified and domesticated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other child-related international conventions and protocols.
According to the latest statistics from UNICEF's Progress for Children Statistical Review, Number 6 of December, 2007, the number of countries that have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) since 2002, is the highest of all related conventions and protocols at 193. Next, at 185, is that of countries that have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Then there is the Optional Protocol to the CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child) on the Involvement of Children in armed Conflict ratified by 117 countries, an increase of 104 countries, from 2002, and finally the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, ratified by 121 countries to date.
We are further advised that there have been some set backs. There are several regions and countries of the world where significant gains had been realized but have now been found to be on the brinks of reversal in the area of HIV/AIDS, poverty, armed conflict. Children are growing up in communities and regions torn apart by armed conflict. Consequently, access to key services such as education, healthcare and clean water is severely compromised.
Distinguished Participants,
Five years down the line, the international community is still not able to deliver on its moral and legal responsibilities to the over one billion children who have been robbed of their childhood and continue to live in poverty in countries ravaged by conflict and HIV / AIDS.
In spite of the ratification figures for all the relevant legislation and instruments outlined above, the statistics on the plight of our children paints a rather horrid picture.
It seems to me, that if we are to bring into reality our named 2002 commitment to creating "A World Fit for Children", we need to move beyond just enacting, ratifying and presenting the best Laws, Acts, Orders, Degrees conventions and protocols possible, into the realm of fewer words and more action. We need to engage precision bombs and stealth bombers of a different kind. In the words of that child who posted her letter on the internet, it is about time we pondered as he or she does, "Why should nations decide their differences by war?"
It is my conviction that our individual states' governance structures should serve as a microcosm of international governance. We have our parliaments, courts of justice and the executive, working together to safeguard the rule of law in general, and create a peaceful and secure world for our children in particular. It is imperative therefore, that we strife to assure the same for the community of nations.
Distinguished Participants,
As a Speaker, my job is to facilitate the making of laws by my fellow Members of Parliament. It is therefore rather difficult for me to imagine any circumstances under which Parliament passes a law that no one has the power to enforce. I am not able to fathom circumstances under which my country's envisaged Child Protection and Welfare Bill, whose objects are to:
...extend, promote and protect the rights of children as defined in the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1990 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and other international instruments, protocols, standards and rules on the protection and welfare of children, to which Lesotho is signatory. would ultimately receive Royal Assent and be passed as an Act of Parliament that no one had the power to administer and enforce.
I have to indicate that this Bill is said to be one of the best legal instruments for the protection of children, in the region, for the manner in which it has simplified, codified and centralised all laws pertaining to the child into one statute. Best of all, it is said to have been the first Bill whose research and drafting processes directly involved the people for whom it was being drafted, the children themselves. In reference to the Bill, a professor Julia Sloth-Neilsen of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, is said to have commended the Bill for offering an "opportunity for Lesotho to update and modernize colonial laws and establish a framework based on today's thinking about child well-being".
I beg your indulgence, to quote but the last paragraph of the introductory chapter to this ground breaking Bill, "In short, the Bill is about to "DISCOVER" new ways of dealing with and addressing children's issues and concerns."
Distinguished Participants,
You will note that the Bill was drafted in 2004, two years after the historic 2002 UN General Assembly in which the children themselves participated, but up to now it still has not been presented to the National Assembly of Lesotho for enactment. As you will no doubt know, until such time that a Bill passes through Parliament and is made into law; unless and until the courts of law and the law enforcement agents are empowered with the requisite legal instrument that is the Children's Protection and Welfare Bill, perpetrators of all related atrocities against Lesotho's children will go unpunished. In the meantime, the new ways of dealing with and addressing children's issues and concerns remain 'undiscovered'.
Similarly, we can sit here and reminisce about all the treaties, conventions and protocols ever signed, invite as many child participants to this or that activity, and receive petition after petition from the children, but unless all countries, especially the so-called super powers, commit to an empowered global judiciary in the name of the International Court of Justice that has all the requisite powers to enforce international law, most importantly, unless all decisions made at the United Nations level are enforceable by law, we shall only live to see more wars, more conflict and an ever exponential growth of the child victims figures I deliberately highlighted earlier.
We need to devise ways and means of urging all nations of the world to conform. We have to join hands in our universal call for a makeover of the ICJ, to transform it into a body that is empowered to take action against states and individuals for acts that are in contravention of international law. We need to provide it with the necessary instruments to decide disputes legally and enforce the law.
How best can we hope to prick the consciences of unwilling nations and world leaders to fast-track the momentum towards a peaceful world? In this regard I wish to thank and congratulate the City Montessori School (CMS), not only for organising the largest ever congregation of the international judicial fraternity to deliberate on the role of the Judiciary in making the world a better place, but also for what I regard as the highlight to this year's summit, that is, their ingenious plan to have the conference give a hearing to the petition of the world's children. It has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword. I trust that proof of this is yet to manifest in this regard.
Allow me as I conclude, Director of Ceremonies, to reiterate the suggestion put forth by the Chief Justice of Lesotho, the Honourable Mahapela Lehohla, in his address to the 6th International Conference of Chief Justices of the World, that perhaps "one of the ways in which the UN bodies can carry forward the struggle for a safe future for children is to provide a forum for direct participation by children themselves". The presentation of the petition by the children to this conference strikes us as the best example of how the children themselves can be enlisted to join and enhance the fight to make this world a better place for all.
Only if we solicit and enlist the support of all UN member countries and all other parties concerned can we hope to banish to the annals of history the horrifying reports that line our bookshelves, titled: World Report on Violence against Children, Childhood under Threat, Africa's Orphaned Children, Child Soldiers, Child Headed Households and the like, only then can we achieve the ultimate goal of an Utopia world for current and future generations, a "World fit for Children".
I thank you. |
