A Quote by John Prendergast
I see courage everywhere I go in Africa. Fearless human rights activists in Darfur. Women peace advocates in eastern Congo. Former child soldiers in Northern Uganda who now are helping other former child soldiers return to civilian life.
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Dr. Kissinger was a former child. Jerry Ford was a former child. Even F.D.R. was a former child. I retired from the movies in 1949, and I'm still a former child.
When we talk about the issue of child soldiers, it can be easy to focus just on ending recruitment and liberating those boys and girls who are currently being held in military camps. Obviously, both of these are incredibly important goals, but it's also essential that we not forget about former child soldiers once they are liberated.
Universal ratification of the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict will establish an international moral consensus that no child should take part in hostilities or be involuntarily recruited and that former child soldiers should be assisted by their governments after a life of violence and distress.
UN peacekeeping operations are now increasingly complex and multi-dimensional, going beyond monitoring a ceasefire to actually bringing failed States back to life, often after decades of conflict. The blue helmets and their civilian colleagues work together to organize elections, enact police and judicial reform, promote and protect human rights, conduct mine-clearance, advance gender equality, achieve the voluntary disarmament of former combatants, and support the return of refugees and displaced people to their homes.
I've never been embedded with American soldiers or British soldiers or Iraqi soldiers or any other.
We receive reports now on a daily basis from our own people on the ground in Darfur on widespread atrocities and grave violations of human rights against the civilian population.
Women should be respected as well! Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn't women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?...Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together!
For many years as a foreign correspondent, I not only worked alongside human rights advocates, but considered myself one of them. To defend the rights of those who have none was the reason I became a journalist in the first place. Now, I see the human rights movement as opposing human rights.
The issue of diamonds in Africa is inseparable from the issue of child soldiers.
The bicycle is a former child's toy that has now been elevated to icon status because, presumably, it can move the human form from pillar to post without damage to the environment.
I wouldn't even call myself a former child star. I was a child actor; there's a difference.
For many child soldiers, war and violence are all they have ever known. If we don't take it upon ourselves to show them an alternative, then they're going to be soldiers forever, and they'll continue to be recruited and to participate in violence if another conflict starts five or 10 years down the road.
We have all these politicians that claim they're pro-life and that say women should not be able to get abortions and all this other stuff... there's nothing more pro-life than helping a woman who wants to have a child have a child. Then I realized that health insurance doesn't cover IVF.
As a former Captain in the Army National Guard, I trained hundreds of soldiers to lead troops into combat.
There's a worldwide linking of environmental activists, developmental experts and human rights advocates. And they're using the two frameworks, in particular environmental standards and human rights.
If it were in our national security to deploy to South Africa under apartheid, would we have found it acceptable or customary to segregate African American soldiers from other American soldiers, and say, 'It's just a cultural thing'? I don't think so. I would hope not.
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