Speeches Former Ambassadors
Ambassador Niels Marquardt Introductory Remarks
U.S. Embassy Child Labor Day Fashion Show
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Your Excellencies,
Honored guests and friends,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are here today with some amazing people. And as you look around, you’ll see many people with impressive credentials and positions of power. But those are not the people I’m talking about. I’m talking about the children, the fashion models you are about to see here on stage, who have moved from oppressive situations to lives of hope and opportunity.
There are so many stories these children have shared with us today and over the last few weeks as they’ve prepared for this event. Each one is moving, and each one is a story of freedom. I’ve had a chance to hear some of their stories, and am familiar with many of their situations from the time I have spent here in Cameroon. They are Cameroonian children, but I think there is something in them, something in their spirit, that is very American.
The words that gave birth to the United States -- “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” –not only form the best-known phrase in American history, they have suffused our national character. They have been difficult words to live up to at times, but they are stirring words, and we have carried them over more than two centuries to ensure not only our own freedom but also the freedom of others.
Although slavery was in our past, we fought a great civil war to end it, and we continue to carry this struggle forward as a champion of human rights and civil liberties in the world today, largely because of these words.
Such struggles do not come easily and are always surrounded by controversy. There was a time when slavery was defended as a beneficial economic practice, one, in fact, that was said to be beneficial to the slaves themselves. Ending slavery took not only determination and the establishment of laws but also a change in the consciousness of a nation.
With determined effort, that change took place in the United States, Great Britain and other countries, but it is an ongoing effort that has taken on a global dimension. And it is only in the last few years that trafficking in persons and child labor have even been recognized as modern-day forms of slavery, but that is what they are.
Like the slavery we are accustomed to reading about in history books, people will say that this modern slavery has economic benefits, both to the practitioners and the victims.
We recognize that many people participate in child trafficking and child labor out of desperation, but that does not make it a benefit to society or to the children subject to it.
We recognize that children need to acquire skills and learn disciplined work habits, but child labor will not give it to them. Child labor robs them of education, of the opportunity to acquire real skills that they can use to choose a future for themselves.
We recognize that parents will hand their children over to traffickers with what they say are the best intentions, although it is difficult to believe that they are not turning a blind eye to the bleak future they offer their own children.
But what we do not recognize is the right of a government to allow these things to happen.
The U.S. Department of State issued its 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report yesterday, June 12. This report covers the efforts of nations world-wide to combat trafficking, which is intimately tied to child labor. The report notes that trafficking in persons is a problem in Cameroon. Cameroon has been identified as a source, transit, and destination country for children and women trafficked for labor and sexual exploitation, and most of these child victims are trafficked within the country.
Children are trafficked for domestic servitude and street vending; as forced laborers on tea, cocoa, banana, and rubber plantations; for forced work in spare-parts shops; and for commercial sexual exploitation.
Happily, although the Government of Cameroon needs to do more, it is making significant efforts to eliminate child labor, by training law enforcement and government officials to identify and protect victims and, in partnership with ILO, educating communities about the dangers of child labor. We also look forward to the completion of the National Strategic Plan Against Child Trafficking,
But it is not just the government that needs to make an effort to end trafficking. Because of historic and cultural influences in Cameroon, many people do not see trafficking as something shameful, much less illegal.
And there are signs of hope. Just last week, on the occasion of the first World Tourism Day, stakeholders in Cameroon’s tourism industry signed an anti-sex tourism charter, to fight a growing evil that has been described as a “borderless crime” that affects three million teenagers worldwide, with Africa worst hit by the crime.
We applaud that step by the private sector, and hope that it will be followed by many more.
To encourage these efforts, and to support the continued awareness of this problem in the public eye, I would like to announce that the U.S. Embassy will give a journalism award at the end of the year to a news organization for the best news coverage of this topic. We will announce the details of this award at a later date, but I wanted to use this opportunity to share our ongoing effort to assist Cameroon in its struggle against child labor and trafficking.
We look forward to the day when child labor and trafficking are not only unlawful but undesirable and shameful. And I look forward to hearing wonderful stories about children whose lives have been changed for the better.
Welcome to our modest effort at helping this happen. We hope you’ll enjoy it, but most of all, we hope you’ll remember the children.
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