Mbeki on Middle East war: The world is in a systemic failure to protect children

Former President Thabo Mbeki at the 30th anniversary of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. Picture: Supplied/ Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund Former president Thabo Mbeki has warned that global conflicts, including the escalating Middle East war, show that the world is failing to protect children. Speaking at the 30th anniversary gala dinner of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund in Johannesburg on Thursday, Mbeki said the international community had collectively failed its youngest citizens.

“The failure to realise children’s rights is not a crisis limited to this country; from Gaza to the displacement camps in South Sudan, and to the 150 Iranian school girls who died on the very first day of the current war between the US and Israel on one hand, and Iran on the other, the world is engaged in a systematic failure to protect its youngest citizens,” he said. Mbeki said the fund’s core philosophy, placing caregivers and children at the centre of political and institutional life, was a vision that the world urgently needed. Mbeki said the protection of children in South Africa was not simply an act of charity but a constitutional duty.

“What we call caregiving is not, in a constitutional democracy, an act of charity. It is an act of justice,” he said. “The failure to provide it is not merely a developmental shortfall.

[paywall]

It is, in the precise legal sense, a breach of our supreme law.” Referring Section 28 of South Africa’s Bill of Rights, Mbeki said the Constitution places the welfare of children above all other interests. “Paramount means that the supreme law of this Republic places the child’s welfare above all other interests in every matter affecting her life,” he said. “Our Constitution fundamentally aspires to be a caregiving document.” He said the Constitution imposed a positive obligation on the state, institutions and society to ensure that every child was protected.

[/paywall]