| Submit your comments on this article |
| International |
| Kofi oozes platitudes about The Children® |
| 2002-05-08 |
| Grown-ups have failed the world's children, allowing malnutrition, disease and abuse to ravage young people, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday at the opening of a global forum on children. Addressing the hundreds of children who for the first time will be participants in this U.N. special session, Annan listed basic rights of childhood -- freedom from poverty, hunger and infectious diseases and from abuse and exploitation and access to education -- and said these have been denied to many. "These rights are obvious," Annan said. "Yet we, the grown-ups, have failed you deplorably in upholding many of them ... We, the grown-ups, must reverse this list of failures." My kids aren't poor, they're not hungry, and have no infectious diseases that I'm aware of. They're not abused or exploited, and each of them has or had access to education. So whaddya mean "We, the grown-ups," Kemo-Sabe? Part of their freedom from such nasty things might have something to do with the fact that they're not allowed around NGOs, especially when the UN's involved. Perhaps Kofi should concentrate first on cleaning up his own house, then on pushing for governmental reforms within those countries that do regard children (and adults) as expendible resources and not bother the civilized nations with his yammering. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |