Format: Real

Duration:22:27 mins.

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

REMARKS BY GRAÇA MACHEL
Recipient of the 1998 IPS International Achievement Award
(Edited transcript)

Forgive me for not following protocol. I don't think I will be able to address you as I should, particularly starting with the personalities represented here at the podium. I must say that I am very touched and moved. And because of that I am not going to read my speech.

Stephen Lewis said that he expected me to say that I would not accept this award as a personal achievement. He is right. This award is not my achievement. It has a special awardee: the children themselves. I am happing to stand here to give a voice and to give a face to those millions of children, hundreds of thousands of them, I was given an opportunity to touch them, to look into their eyes, to feel the sense of despair and children who let me in a situation where I went back home, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. This award is actually granted to those children of Goma who were my first experience to deal with children in a refugee camp. And I learned that we were not talking about numbers. We were talking about every each one of them as a human being. And that's when I understood that what I have been asked to do was absolutely beyond my capacity. Those children with their eyes looking at me expressing in one sense despair, and in other sense hope, expecting from me something I could not provide them. Those eyes are still in my mind today. And it is such emotions that when I stand here I think myself I don't know many of them are still alive.

This award to the children of a feeding center in Sierra Leone. I went there with my colleagues. We should have about 300 to 400 children laying in a huge warehouse. I never felt so angry but at the same time so powerless. I left that place looking at those children, some of them completely swollen and I knew that they wouldn't survive until the following day. And I know that at least half of those children did not survive. I couldn't express my anger to those who had condemned those children to that situation. And I want to say this award is granted to those children, whether they are alive or not.

But the award is granted also to my colleagues, many of them who are here among us today. The team, the wonderful and extraordinary team we managed to put together, actually with Stephen Lewis who is sitting here. Because he was the one who gave me the insights and the capacity to bring that huge chain of solidarity we managed to develop with governments, with NGOs, with the press. Those people who representing individuals but also institutions they helped to prepare the report we presented to the General Assembly. This award is to all of them.

My question today is: Did we achieve anything? Yesterday I was thinking, no, I don't think we did achieve anything at all. But today listening here I can say, yes, we gave children a platform and that alone is an achievement. We reached a situation where the Security Council had to hold a debate on children in armed conflict, and the presidential statement which came out of it confirmed exactly what we wanted: to take children to the center of the political, economic, social agenda and actually humanitarian and human rights agenda. When the Security Council, I remember in this house I was so angry, I was talking to somebody at the Political Department I believe, and I said how do you have children in your agenda. He turned to me and said: "Children, no, the Political Department has nothing to do with children." I was so angry. If the Political Department has nothing to do with people, then probably people should just pack and go and leave this place. Now the Security Council gave legitimacy to our demand. Children are a concern at that level. That alone is an achievement.

But the reason you came here and representing all spectrums of people is not because of the team we are. It's not because of Graça Machel. It's because of the issue we raised which is developing interest, which I hope you are going to take it as part of your own agenda. That's the achievement we are talking about.

I believe we did also contribute to some of the successes that were mentioned here. The landmines treaty, we campaigned very strongly to make sure that landmines should be an issue of concern that commit States and the whole of the international community to adopt the instrument. And of course we have much more work to do. But today it's no longer questioned whether humanitarian mine clearance is to be discussed. We accept it as a principle.

The International Criminal Court recently created recognized that violence against women and girls is a war crime. At the time we prepared the report only the Tribunals in Rwanda and Bosnia would recognize gender violence as a war crime. Today, it is a universal issue that whenever women and girls are abused, are used as a weapon of war, this is to be tried as a war crime. It is a success.

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission treated children as a distinct part of its mandate. It was probably the first time in history where a Truth and Reconciliation Commission paid that attention, gave visibility, gave a face and identity to children and to see how to develop methodologies of reparations. And part of it was also our contribution.

Now we talk of demobilzation and we take children as part of demobilization process, which before had not been done. In my own country, despite knowing that hundreds of thousands of children had been involved in conflict, when the peace process was developed nobody, none of the parties involved in the conflict, even the United Nations which was there, nobody took children into account. They went through villages and we had a little notion of who they are and how many there are, but they were never taken as a group. But in Angola this is a process.

Recently in Sierra Leone a demobilization process was taking place and I am glad to report that even private initiatives like the Ted Turner Foundation, the UN Foundation, now they are channeling resources to demobilize children in Sierra Leone. This is a success. Two years ago we didn't have this.

Francis Deng's work on displaced people provides now a legal framework for displaced people, to be treated as such. Two years ago this was not the case. And we witnessed situations where internally displaced people were being sent like a ping-pong to one and another site. Government would say, this the UN to deal, the UN would say governments. But today, we know that we have a clear legal basis. I am happy to report that Francis Deng is one of our eminent persons.

Today we have the special representative of the Secretary-General of children in armed conflicts. As Stephen reported, it was a bit controversial at the beginning. But now it is understood that to keep this agenda and the advocacy around this issue, we need someone who can continue to bring together UN agencies, government, civil society organizations together so that we proceed ahead what we have gained but to make much more impact, particularly in the implementation of the series of recommendations which have been approved by the General Assembly.

Today we have an NGO coalition to stop the use of child soldiers, based in Geneva. Part of the NGOs involved were our partners preparing some of the recommendations that I included in the report. We are proud to see that they have picked up the challenge we posed to them to say, "Develop a campaign if possible like the one the international community had around landmines. Let us stop the use of child soldiers."

I mean, we could try to bring these and other issues. But I would like to say that together with these achievements, maybe the worst of it is that we tried to bring prevention to the center of this house and to the center of governments themselves. But preventing conflicts is still far from what we would like to see. In these two years we all know, we probably don't want to talk about it, we know that hundreds and thousands of people died in Eastern Congo. How many children were there? We don't even know. We don't talk about it. The worst is that the Congo is still in conflict today, and children in many parts are still not only caught up as targets but especially being used as soldiers.

Kosovo was not there two years ago. Some of us could have predicted that something would happen. But we didn't have either the political courage or the capacity to prevent conflict today. And many signals which exist today are potential of conflict eruption we do not have yet the methodologies, the instruments and the mechanisms to prevent conflicts. Then whatever are the successes that we can say we have reached now, tomorrow a year after, we will have to say that more children are being killed, more children are being maimed. The point is when are we going to say, no we are reversing the process. to concentrate, yes, in meeting the consequences of conflict, but more importantly to prevent conflicts from erupting. We have to manage this issue. We cannot continue to ignore it, because otherwise we can ask very seriously how much are we investing in this house. The United Nations was created as a house for all us as nations to learn to live together, to learn to solve our problems in a peaceful way. Actually the major mandate of the United Nations is to prevent conflicts, is to promote tolerance and living together.

Now, the question I raise is: are we investing our capacity, expertise, knowledge, resources in meeting exactly the needs of this house of all of us? Fifty years later, I think it's important to revisit why this house was created and how are we moving in the direction to meet exactly the objectives. I know what I am saying is not that simple. But what I am raising is whatever are the efforts we can make to try to tackle the consequences of conflict before we concentrate on conflict prevention, we have not been making the progress we intend.

I think I would end saying I want to give this award, closing with a positive note, to 2.7 million children of Colombia who gave me one of the best lessons of how children can take control of themselves, but more importantly they can impose an agenda on adults and even on institutions. When we visited Colombia, we went to a play which I can't remember the name now, 500 hundred children had organized and had taken over power as they said. They dismissed every institution including the president, the prime minister, everybody, and they said: "now children have taken power". And they had elected a president, a prime minister, and mayor of the place and they had an assembly and the president of that assembly. When I am recounting now it looks like it's a joke, but it was so impressive. They talked to us and they were able to say, "peace is the first demand of children". We encouraged these children to take their message exactly to the heart of power in Colombia. Much later, from 500 they were they organized a movement which came to the 2.7 million I am referring now. They were so powerful that they even presented as a candidate to Nobel Peace Prize. They did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, but these are the children I would like to give them this award. Because today we have Colombia negotiating peace. Actually I learned that the president of the country went to the areas of conflict to sit there to negotiate peace. And a special mandate came from the demand of children of that country. This is the example of yes as we have children as victims we have children as targets, and children are becoming more and more when they are empowered to know the rights they have they came to us as adults to challenge us, to give us lessons and actually to set agenda for us.

I hope the media which is particularly associated to this award we are receiving today, I have to thank them very much for this, I hope the media will help civil society organizations, the research institutions, all those who built the movement in favour of child rights, that the media will take this far beyond what a single group of NGOs can do. You have such a powerful possibility to reach every house in the world. Instead of only describing the crimes that are being committed against children, please take the message of their resilience and their capacity as I mentioned to teach us. But more importantly, make child rights part of your agenda. To educate children themselves is empowerment, to educate adults all of us, families, communities, nations, interregional institutions, the global community, so that again more and more we develop a culture of respect for child rights. And in that actually we will address most of the political, economic and social agendas.

I thank you very much.