By Elizabeth Willoughby on
Actor Ralph Fiennes, UNICEF UK Ambassador, has made a small video on his promise to children. The video clip and his promise are in support of UNICEF’s Promise Me Campaign.
In anticipation of the G8 summit that took place earlier this month, UNICEF wanted to bring attention to the millions of children around the world who are unable to live a normal childhood even though the “convention on the rights of the child” was ratified by most countries twenty years ago. It is violated everyday, especially in places such as Somalia and Chad.
Fiennes went to Chad to meet with some of the children, and listened to their “horrific stories of degrading and brutalizing treatment.”
“In these tough economic times and as the G8 gathers, if the world leaders break their promises, children will suffer irreversible damage. A whole generation will lose out,” says Fiennes in his clip.
“All children have rights – rights to education, and health, to have a voice, and to be treated fairly, to simply be a child, not catapulted into a world of adult stresses and strains. And these rights don’t stop when the going gets tough.
“We cannot turn our backs on the hardest to reach. We must work harder than ever to protect their rights to health and education and to give them back their childhood, to give them back their futures.”
Copyright © 2009 Look to the Stars
