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Palestinian Children Denounce Israeli Occupation, UN Adopts Action Plan
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Israel's army did that, Reem |
UNITED
NATIONS, May 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A delegation of
Palestinian teenagers denounced Israel's occupation and issued a
message of tolerance and defiance, as Friday night UN member states unanimously
adopted a 21-point plan of action for the coming decade,
to improve the health and education of children worldwide, news
agencies reported.
The
four young people held up blackened schoolbags and books destroyed in
an Israeli land mine explosion that killed five children on their way
to school and told stories of the hardships and humiliations they
suffered at the hands of Israeli occupation army, according to news
agencies.
The
Palestinian teens said the occupation, specifically the latest Israeli
aggression that began in March, deprived Palestinian children of their
basic rights.
"We
are seeing Palestinian children killed, abused, destroyed as
children," said Ahmad al-Kheri, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy.
"They are shot everywhere ... We are seeing them destroyed by the
Israeli soldiers in our country."
Jenin
Zaal Abu Ruqti, a 15-year-old girl from Ramallah, said the Palestinian
delegation hoped for peace and saw Israeli children as allies in the
effort to end the fighting.
"We
love everybody. We are children. We don't hate anybody," she
said. "We came here with a voice of peace from all the
Palestinian children."
Al-Kheri,
however, defended the Palestinian resistance saying that bombing
attacks against Israelis were acts of self-defense.
"We
are not for killing innocent people ... but when you are talking about
somebody who has his land occupied, who has his friends being killed
and abused every day ... he has the right to defend himself,"
al-Kheri said. "If he hasn't any other way to defend himself but
that, he'll use it."
Palestinians
and representatives of other Islamic nations are pressing for a
specific mention of the plight of Palestinian children in the U.N.
children's summit's final declaration, an effort denounced by Israel
and the U.S.
"They're
trying to hijack (the final document) in their narrow political
interest and thus deprive the world of action on a nonpolitical
important issue," said Ariel Milo, a spokesman for Israel's U.N.
mission.
But
the Palestinian children at the conference, all of whom participated
in a Children's Forum held just before the U.N. summit, blamed Israel
for depriving them of their rights.
"The
main thing is to end occupation because it violates all Palestinian
children's rights," said Reem Hassan, a 16-year-old girl.
Abdul
Rahman, a 15-year-old boy from Gaza, said Palestinian children are fed
up with adults on both sides.
"We
are disappointed with some of the adults ... because they don't do
anything to end the problem," he said. "And some of the
adults are the cause of the problem."
Meanwhile,
participants UN member states unanimously adopted a 21-point plan of
action for the coming decade to improve life conditions for children
worldwide, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"I
am enormously proud and pleased at what has been accomplished this
week," said Carol Bellamy, director of the UN Children's
Fund UNICEF at the close of a three-day special session of the UN
General Assembly.
"If
leaders keep the promises they have made, we can bring about enormous
positive change in the world in less than a generation."
The
plan was part of a 24-page document, "A World Fit For Children",
focusing on four priorities: promoting healthy lives; quality
education for all; protecting children from abuse, exploitation and
violence; and combating HIV/AIDS.
The
special session was called to assess progress towards 10-year targets
that were adopted at the first world summit on children in 1990, many
of which remained unmet.
The
new plan set targets for 2010, notably to reduce by at least one third
the mortality rates of infants and children under five, and of mothers
after childbirth.
Even
so, Britain's minister for children and young people, John Denham,
told the Assembly these were too timid to ensure the success of
meeting the UN's
Millennium goals of slashing child mortality by two-thirds by 2015 and
maternal mortality by three-quarters.
Click here for the main points of the UN’s 21-point plan of action adopted to help
free children from the threats of poverty, hunger, disease and war
over the coming decade.
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