Address by the Archbishop of Canterbury

World Vision Conference

23 May 2000

I am delighted to be with you today and to share in our common concern for the children of our world.

In January my wife Eileen and I were in South Africa, and we shall never forget the children's home we visited in Durban. It was the only home of its kind in that city, and it cared for young babies and children under five suffering from HIV/AIDS. There we held in our arms lovely looking babies, many of whom only had a few months to live. One of the children I held was a delightful little girl of 15 months who had a badly injured leg, but she was responding well to treatment after many months of physiotherapy - even though she too was HIV positive. She was found pinned under the dead body of her 25 year old mother, five or six days after her mother had passed away. Her twin sister already lay dead by her mother's side.

Although we cannot - and should not - detach our concern for children from the rest of the human family, this illustration reminds us that, among suffering and marginalised peoples, children are the marginal of the marginal. Children are defenceless and vulnerable and therefore from the divine and human perspectives deserve our particular attention. And female children are marginalised further still. As one description has it, "Because she is of no value, [the girl child] is a burden to the family; and because she is a burden, she is of no value."

And yet, even in the poorest of situations, that kind of understanding is deeply challenged. When we travelled to Gulu in northern Uganda in 1998, the village we visited had been raided during the night by soldiers from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Some dozen or so children had been abducted, and my wife and I spoke to the numbed and crying mothers. But no amount of caring words and affirming prayers could take away from the reality that their children of 8 to 12 were gone and were unlikely to be found. These are people who have more than enough grief in their lives - but what really causes them the greatest misery is to have their children violently wrenched from them. These children had great value in their parents' eyes and nothing could be said to balance that loss. So as we look at Christian engagement and the future of the world's children we need to remind ourselves of the facts.

In this conference horrifying statistics have been repeated time and again.

Concerning development: that 125 million children, two thirds of them girls, do not have the opportunity to attend primary school and a further 150 million are unable by economic circumstances or lack of opportunity to go on beyond grade four.

Concerning health: that 1.3 billion people lack safe water and 2.5 billion are without adequate sanitation. That unclean water claims the lives of five million children annually.

Concerning exploitation: that some 250 million children are forced to work long hours so that their families may survive. Many of these children, mostly girls but some boys as well, will be forced into prostitution. Many will be forced into drug trafficking and become addicts themselves. So too, as the marginal of the marginal, children are helpless to resist being forced into armed service and some three million youngsters are today soldiers in such armies.

These, then, are some of the statistics which give urgency to the challenges we face: spiritual, moral, and political.

The first challenge we face is a spiritual challenge. The Christian charter is that each of us is made in the image of God and is loved by him; there is no distinction made by reason of age, gender, race, colour or creed. That being said, human circumstances, of course, play an important role in determining whether our individual life chances will be fulfilled. If you were fortunate enough to be born into a family in America or Europe, for example, your chances of a good life are immeasurably greater than if you were born into a family in Mozambique. That is why the cruel circumstances of others presents a spiritual challenge to us.

It is for this reason that Jesus showed such special concern for the poor and the oppressed. All one needs do is read the Gospel of Luke to hear - time and time again - Jesus' instructions about caring for the needy. Think of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." Or think of the Parable of the Good Samaritan: a true 'neighbour' is one who shows mercy to one in need. It is the marginalised who are truly privileged in Christ's eyes.

And as the marginal of the marginal, children are a particular spiritual concern. Jesus made us aware of this and the preciousness of children when he took a child and put him in the middle of the disciples and said: "Whoever receives one such child receives me - but whoever causes one of these little children to sin, it were better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."

The passage is saying two profound and important things about children. First, that they are so important to God that their trusting nature is a symbol of the kind of trust God wants from us all. Second, that Jesus resisted the prevailing cultural wisdom which regarded children as chattel property. Instead, he elevated them to such a position that to harm them would be to face great punishment in the kingdom of heaven. Children, in other words, are not property owned by others, but people made in God's image and must therefore be accorded great dignity and respect.

Tragically, at the moment many of the world's children have no certain future. Life for them is a hand-to-mouth existence with few pleasures and more than enough sadness to last several lifetimes. This is why Christians in particular must get passionate about the need to help children. It is a spiritual issue for everybody who professes the faith of Jesus Christ. And it is right for Christians to get passionate. I am struck time by all the good work that Churches and coalitions are doing, and by the ways in which various aid associations are working together on behalf of the world's neediest children. I am delighted, for instance., by the greater levels of co-operation that have been established to bring aid when a natural disaster strikes a country. But even more impressive, perhaps, is the long-term developmental work that World Vision, Christian Aid and others are increasingly co-operating in, for it is these that will bring the greatest long-term benefit to the children of our world.

And beyond the spiritual challenge to Christians, the plight of marginalised children presents a moral challenge to humanity as a whole. The issues are moral when we begin to contemplate the ability of the human race to achieve so many wonderful and powerful things. Think of our ability to send rockets to explore Mars and planets beyond. Think of our ability to marshal armies to confront those who threaten the freedom of others as we did in both the Gulf and Kosovo campaigns. Think of our ingenuity in information technology and the amazing discoveries we are making in the realm of science. There seems little that humankind cannot do.

And with great power, after all, comes great responsibility. Despite the fact that we possess the ability to do so much, there is still so much that is left undone. There remains a moral divide between rich and poor, empowered and disenfranchised. When we think, for example, of the fact that this world, small though it is, can feed all of us, we have to ask with puzzlement: "Why is it then that over 840 million people are undernourished; 200 million of them children under 15?" When we consider that in the 70's, people in the developed countries were 30 times better off than those in the poorest countries but are now 74 times wealthier, the moral challenge becomes plainer. In 1999 the United Nations Development Programme estimated that the 200 richest individuals in the world had more than the combined income of the lowest 40% of the world's population. Such a disparity is truly scandalous in light of our potential.

Thus, if the first world has the ability to help change things and if our tiny planet home has the potential to feed us all, we have to confront the moral challenge: "Why is it not happening?". If we say that every child has the right to live, to enjoy the benefits of education and to know human happiness and love - this becomes a moral obligation on us to do something about it.

And we must not confuse one-off charitable acts with long-term development. Archbishop David Gitari once told a parable which went like this:

There was once a church just outside the gate of a busy factory. The vicar began to notice that every day ambulances would arrive and take injured people to hospital. The vicar asked to see the owner and he suggested that instead of going a long way to hospital, it would be better perhaps to treat the injured people in the church hall and his people would be glad to help. The owner was delighted with the offer of help. Everyone was pleased with the arrangement; the owner was glad to get medical help for his workers and the church felt that they were making an important Christian contribution.

One day as the Church reflected on the progress they were making, one of the helpers said quietly: "But, what is going on in the factory which causes such injuries? Perhaps we might be able to make such a difference that there will be less need for us to offer our services in quite that way." The vicar, impressed with that argument, asked to see the owner and suggested that perhaps he and a few others might visit the factory to see what is causing such terrible injuries. This was agreed and the visit resulted in permanent changes to machinery, practice, training and education.

The story is, of course, about the balance between charity and development; from the results of problems to their causes; from sticking plaster to self-reliance. And we must resist the temptation just to address problems in terms of aid alone. This is not to belittle the importance of aid when an emergency threatens a region, as for example the terrible floods which devastated Mozambique a few months ago. Aid has it place, but unless we address the need for ongoing development we shall be marking time for the next emergency to hit the world.

I salute the commitment of Clare Short, secretary of State for Overseas Development, who has championed the halving of world poverty by the year 2015. If everyone were to pull together it is still just possible. The consequences would be tremendous for many children. But achieving such a goal requires that our moral commitment to release nations from debt be met by their moral commitment to act nobly and generously for the sake of the very poor.

For morality is always a two-way street. It goes without saying that poor countries must have governments which put the people first and which are accountable to them. There must be trustworthiness in political and social life. Corruption is an enemy of the poor and compromises those many good people in poor societies who are struggling to change the way things are in their countries. Responsible governments will want their actions and their financial implications known. The sad litany of corrupt regimes in Africa during the last fifty years have left their nations financially exhausted and their people ruined. We have to capture the passion and the sense of outrage that such things should not happen in a world where the rich have so much and the poor have so little.

And the challenge is also political. By this I mean that specific things can and should be done now to bring about change. Historically, Christians have been able to effect positive social change. And the good news is that there is a strong tradition in this country, and around the world, of Christians taking actions that have brought tremendous long-term benefits to many. Think, for instance, of Shaftesbury and the outstanding work he and others did in bringing in the Factory Acts against child labour. Or again, just a few hundred yards from here, there is a statue of Robert Raikes, the pioneer of the Sunday School movement, which laid the foundations for so much of the educational system not only in this country but around the world.

The plain fact is that Christians have changed society in the past, they are changing it at present, and, in our contemporary world, we must accept the challenges being placed before us to change it in the future.

First, we must find ways of championing the many millions of children abducted and drafted into armed conflict as soldiers. We are of course delighted that the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution last August recognising the impact of armed conflict on children. We look forward to the report that the Secretary General will present to the UN next month. We shall not be satisfied unless there is a clear resolve to provide effective legislation which will protect vulnerable youngsters. However, we are not so innocent as to be believe that legislation will be the total answer. Unpleasant and desperate regimes will hardly respect international law - but legislation will be a start and if it is backed by vigorous campaigning and appropriate sanctions we stand a greater chance of helping those in greatest need.

Second, we must champion the children forced into work. That there are 250 million child labourers - the vast majority under the age of 12 - is a horrifying statistic. Most of them live and work in Asia. But in campaigning for them we must, of course, be aware that depriving them of employment does not provide the solution. People who have nothing often are often forced to extreme measures. It goes without saying that the same tenderness and love which lead us to protect our children motivates very poor families. They have no wish to see their daughters forced into prostitution or their sons begging in the streets, or working long hours to earn a few pence to make carpets. Campaigns aimed at ending exploitative child labour have to go hand-in-glove with campaigns for a living wage.

Third, we must find ways of providing education for the very poor. We can rejoice that there are more children in education in the third world than ever before. As UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said, "Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development." There is overwhelming evidence that education is the major way out of the poverty trap. The World Bank report for 1999 stated that education "raises economic productivity, reduces maternal and infant mortality, reduces fertility rates, improves health and the educational prospects of the next generation." Within the general aim of improving the quality and availability of education, there is strong evidence that to improve the lot of girls would have a huge knock-on effect. It can not only change their lives but also the lives of their own children when they become mothers.

The spiritual, moral and political challenges are therefore imperatives for us all who live such comfortable and privileged lives. The many visits I have made to third world countries provide me with many vivid memories of the very poor.

Let me conclude by telling you about my visit to Rwanda just a short while after the genocide of 1994. One of our Bishops, Alexis, a Tutsi, who was fortunate indeed to escape with his life, started his own adoption network and within a few months was caring for 1800 children. We met several adults who, because of huge need, were parents for up to 20 children. Innocent, a girl of 18 who was raped and left for dead but survived. She gave birth to the child and now cares for 15 other children. Clement, a lad of 17 who lost his entire family. He volunteered to care for others and has ten in his charge. And Thaciene, a mature lady of about 70 whose entire family was killed by the government led killers who now has a ready made family of 17. I found incredible joy and love in these homes. The people have so little but after the terrifying ordeal they have passed through, they have security at last and the hope of a better future. It is a hope that we are called to keep alive. That is the challenge - spiritual, moral, political. Let us rise to meet it!