You
can't let your failures define you -- you have to let your failures
teach you.
You have to
let them show you what to do differently the next time.
Obama, National Address to
America's Schoolchildren, September 2009
The United States has had
many challenges of human rights and people have stood up for the equal
human rights for all people. Our commitment to human rights continuously
leads us to change. In
the US people owned by other people as property through slavery until
we stood up and demanded a change. Slavery ended in1865 with the 13 Amendment of the Constitution that
declared, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist
within the United States." Today, the federal
anti-slavery statutes were updated in the Trafficking Victims Protection
Act of 2000, P.L. 106-386, which expanded the federal statutes'
coverage to cases in which victims are enslaved through psychological,
as well as physical, coercion.
Nothing
can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for
change.
-- Obama, speech, January
2008.
The CRC acknowledges that
every child has certain basic human
rights. It requires that member states act in the best interests of
the child, instead of the common law approach that treats children as
possessions, ownership of which is often argued over in family disputes
and separation. The CRC recognizes certain basic human rights, including
the right to life, to be protected from abuse orexploitation, to be raised by his or her parents within a family or cultural
grouping and have a relationship with both parents, even if they are separated.
Life doesn't count for much
unless you're willing to do your small part to leave
our children –
all of our children – a better world. Even if it's difficult. Even if
the work seems
great.
- Obama, speech, June 2008.
President Obama
joined his predecessors in receiving the Nobel
Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway in December 2008. "Very rarely has a person to the same extent as
Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a
better future," (the Nobel committee citation, Oslo October 2009). President Omaba’s vision for a better world, his determination
to allow it to be a “call to action” and to lead the American people and
the world to embrace truth, forge common ground and reconciliation. He
is in the company of other great humanitarians, including Arch Bishop
Desmond Tutu, who stood up for the human rights of people during
apartheid and then lead truth and reconciliation, is actively still
committed to human rights.
Change
will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.
We
are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
- Obama, speech, Feb. 5,
2008
The Little Ambassador, Ariana-Leilani,
the six-year old German-American
African Jewish optimist who represents all children asks “please
President Obama lead the American people to adopt children’s human
rights through the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
All of us share this world for
but a brief moment in time. The question is whether
we spend that
time focused on what pushes us apart or whether we commit ourselves
to
an effort, a sustained effort to find common ground, to focus on the
future we seek
for our children and to respect the dignity of all
human beings.
- Obama, speech, June 2009
The Ariana-Leilani Childrens Foundation
International (www.Ariana-LeilaniFoundation.org)