My brother Patrice,
Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,
Nelson Mandela said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
By that measure, our soul as a global society is stained.
One billion children experience physical, emotional, and sexual abuse every year. One billion futures hanging in the balance.
Often, violence occurs in homes and schools - the very places where children should feel safest.
Children who experience violence are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviours later in life, such as unsafe sex, harmful alcohol and drug use and smoking.
They are also more likely to be involved in violence as they grow up, and to attempt suicide.
Violence does more than harm individual children; it undermines the fabric of our society. It strips children of the opportunity to build happy, healthy lives and costs the global economy billions of dollars each year.
This is a cycle we can break. We have the solutions to prevent violence – and, in doing so, enable progress on related public health and societal challenges – now it's time to take them to scale.
As part of the Sustainable Development Goals, every government has committed to working towards ending violence against children by 2030.
We are now at the halfway stage. In the ‘first half’ we’ve made progress, but we must work harder, faster and smarter in the second half to meet the challenge in front of us.
I thank Colombia and Sweden for your leadership in hosting the first Global Ministerial Conference on ending violence against children next year.
And thank you to my friend Patrice Evra for your leadership and tireless advocacy.
As a player you were a vigorous defender who was always eager to get forward.
And that’s what you’re doing now – defending the world’s children, and driving us all forward towards a world that protects them.
Thank you.