Nobel Laureate and anti-child labour activist, Dr Kailash Satyarthi has lashed out at nations and international development partners for paying lip service to their commitment to ending all forms of child labour by 2025.
The social justice campaigner was speaking at the 10thAfrica Students and Youth Summit organized by the All-Africa Students Union.
The theme for this year’s summit was; Act, Inspire and Scale-up – Giving a fair share to end child labour.
According to Dr Satyarthi, the world has fallen behind on its own commitment in the Sustainable Development Goals to end all forms of child labour by 2025. He attributed the situation to a series of problems including; inequality, lack of education, etc.
n poverty, the 2014 Nobel Laureate noted that the world is wealthy enough to eradicate child labour. However, what is accounting for the failure to address the problem is a poverty of kindness, poverty of empathy, and poverty of humanity more broadly. He therefore charged nations and international development partners to work collaboratively beyond the rhetoric to fight issues of injustice.
Specifically on Africa, Dr Satyarthi noted that about half of the world’s child labour victims are in sub-Saharan.
This, he says, is completely unacceptable. He further added that after 4 decades working at the forefront of fighting injustice in India and around the world, he is even more renewed in his commitment to see the work through.
Dr Satyarthi urged students leaders to take up the mantle and fight hard to liberate all children in Africa and around the world from child labour.
