Courtesy translation
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, released the following statement to mark the World Day for the Rights of Children and Adolescents:
«Every day, in every corner of the Earth, children continue to die under airstrikes, are brutalized and exploited – in the body and mind – and are abducted and discriminated. The tragedies of which they are innocent victims will mark their lives forevermore.
The world thus deprives itself of its future.
Year after year, wars, climate crises, and poverty increase the number of children and adolescents who escape their condition and their homeland while seeking to keep safe and to liberate themselves from an inhuman fate.
Also in Italy the data depict an unacceptable situation in which minors live in conditions of poverty.
The commitment that, also stimulated through the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has been generously dedicated to the issue up to now has proven to be insufficient: the existing gap between the needs and the results is too wide.
The efforts needed to effectively protect the rights of children are far from being fulfilled.
Girls and boys have the right to have equal opportunities in life; they have the right to being heard and accepted and to live out their age to the full.
They have the right to peace.
To tangibly recognize and promote these rights by providing them with the necessary tools to become informed adults means giving us all hope for a better future. ».
