A boy gets his share of dirt, stones, and mud that he will process using a wooden pan to separate gold from other elements in this photograph taken in 2015 in a province south of the Philippine capital Manila. (Photo by Mark Saludes)
Jul 31 2021
It was a massive international solidarity march in 1999 along the streets of Geneva. Thousands of children and supporters from all over Europe and Asia were there to encourage and support the approval and signing by the world’s nations of the document “Worse Forms of Child Labor Convention 1999.”
I was there with other NGO representatives giving voice to our deep concern for all children and especially the Filipino children that were enslaved in unjust, exploitative labor practices. It was a huge problem then, but an abomination that is still with us today despite the passing of the convention that inspired new child protection laws in the Philippines and around the world.
I marched with Filipina activist Cecilia Flores-Oebanda and my friend and fellow child right’s activist Kailash Satyarthi of India who had campaigned and promoted non-violence action against child labor for many years for the children of Asia and in particular India. He was awarded in 2014 the Nobel Peace Prize along with Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan for their work “focusing attention on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.” They promoted the rights of the child to be free from labor and to have an education.
At the Preda Foundation, our team had campaigned since its founding in 1974 and continues to work to end all child labor especially the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children. For that work, we were honored and recognized by the awarding of four nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and other human rights awards. These have helped to highlight the importance of standing against child exploitation which is the challenge and duty of all persons who recognize the rights of the child not to be exploited and abused and turned into commodities and dehumanized laborers especially as sex workers.
Twenty-two years after the convention was passed, we are still rescuing teenage girls from sex brothels and motels, sex traffickers and child sex abusers. The victim-survivors are broken and suffering as their dignity was taken from them. This is symbolized in Geneva by the huge 12 meters (39 feet) high sculpture of the “Broken Chair” in front of the Palace of Nations. It is a sculpture in wood (5.5 tons of it) by the Swiss artist Daniel Berset, made by the carpenter Louis Genève. It is an ordinary chair with one leg broken that reminded us, as we marched under its shadow of the dark cloud of pain, of the broken lives of victims of violence. A reminder of our duty to always stand for and take action to prevent, rescue and heal the victims-survivors of exploitation and abuse.
The dark cloud of deprivation, loss of education, family care and love, and personal freedom and loss of dignity and self-confidence that are necessary for the development of a child are taken away.
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