Format: Real

Duration: 8:20 mins.

Inter Press Service International Achievement Award
United Nations, New York, 17 September 1998

RERMARKS BY AMBASSADOR FRANCESCO PAOLO FULCI
Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations

I am truly honoured, truly privileged, to speak at today's ceremony for three main reasons. First and foremost, because I really cannot think of any other person more worthy of receiving the IPS award than the honorable Graça Machel. She has been a pioneer, she has led a lifelong crusade to assure children - all of our children - the right to health, education and respect for their fundamental human rights. Moreover, Graça Machel has a very rare gift of knowing how to communicate with the princes who rule this world and at the same time dealing compassionately with forgotten children who struggle to survive some of the most ruthless violence of our world of today.

The second reason is that my country, Italy, played quite a role in the international efforts to end the 15-year-old civil war in Ms. Machel's homeland, Mozambique. As some of you may remember, the peace agreement was signed in Rome on October 4, 1992, under the auspices of the Italian government in the Sant'Egidio principles. Today, Mozambique is considered, and quite rightly so, one of the great success stories of the United Nations. And if it was a success story, to a large extent this is also due to the personal commitment to the tireless dedication of leaders like the Honourable Graça Machel.

After having been very active in the movement to increase literacy and schooling for the children of Mozambique ever since the period of the struggle for independence in 1975, she was asked to join the first Mozambique government as minister for education and culture, a position she held until 1989. On October 19, 1996, her late husband President Samora Machel was killed in a plane crash. Rather than withdrawing from public life after the tragedy as many would probably have done, the Honourable Graça Machel sought consolation through a renewed and increased commitment to her country's social development, paying special attention to the plight of the most vulnerable groups, women and children - in Mozambique first and later on worldwide. This is what led the United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in June 1994 to place her in charge of preparing a study on the impact of armed conflict on children.

The study was presented to the United Nations in August 1996. It is both the chilling description of the atrocities committed against the most defenseless as well as a powerful and moving call to mobilization in order, to user her word, "to recapture our instinct to knowledge and protect our children". The motto of Mrs. Machel's report is, and I quote, "transform moral outrage into concrete action." I for one am proud to be among those enlisted into service of this noble cause.

In fact, one day, while sitting in the Security Council and hearing horrible accounts of the suffering of children in Liberia, I decided I could not stand idly by when countless brutalities were being perpetrated against our children, the future of humanity. Which brings me to the third and most personal reason why I am so proud to be on this platform tonight. Since March 1997 I have been one of the ten members of the Geneva committee for the implementation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. This is, as some of you may know, an international treaty adopted in New York on November 29, 1990, to safeguard the rights and freedom of every human being under the age of 18.

So far it has been signed by 193 states, eight more than the total membership of the United Nations. It has been ratified by 191 states. This is a universal endorsement which is an unparalleled testimony to the impact of children and their problems on the international conscience. The honourable Machel's report is a milestone in international efforts to stem and reverse the tide of victimizing children in conflicts and in war. Thanks to her effort and to her documentation today nobody can ignore the strong and clear warning that "the impact of armed conflict on children must be everyone's concern and peace everyone's responsibility."

Last June her successor as the Secretary-General's special representative on children in armed conflict, Ambassador Olara Otunnu, reported some frightening statistics to special session of the Security Council. In the past 10 years two million children have been killed in wars, six million have been mutilated, twelve million left homeless, one million left as orphans and ten million marked by the infallible psychic and spiritual scourge. This in my opinion is nothing else than a modern day massacre of the innocents.

When Archbishop Desmond Tutu met in 1995 with the eminent group that Graça Machel had united to assist her in the preparation of the report, he invoked the dream of a society where people are more important than things, where children are precious, a world where people can be more human, more caring and more gentle. To conclude, I think that perhaps the most fitting tribute that we can pay to our guest of honour tonight is to commit ourselves, each and everyone of us, to make that dream become a reality.