This post is all about Intelligence, Integrity and speaking out because you know you have to.
14 year old Rachel Parent debates Rude fucking asshole Kevin O'Leary on the issue of Genetically Modified FoodWhat a sack of shit this old man is. What a hero Rachael is.
Rachel's website: http://www.gmo-news.com
-------------------
11-Year-Old Yemeni Girl Speaks, Internet Listens
from Huffington Post
On Sunday morning, Reddit user Syd_G submitted a three-minute YouTube clip of 11-year-old Nada Al-Ahdal describing why she was running away from home to live with her uncle. According to a translation provided by subtitles (and more or less confirmed by several Reddit users), she starts off by saying:
It's true that I ran away from my family. I can't live with them anymore. Enough. I want to go live with my uncle. What about the innocence of childhood? What have the children done wrong? Why do you marry them off like that?
Four hours later, the video had been upvoted nearly 4,700 times (unusually high for Reddit) and began circulating in news stories across the world.
Details on the child's story are still unclear but her three-minute monologue on child marriage in Yemen is receiving rave reviews, and it's not hard to understand why: she speaks with excellent articulation and passion, and her eyes force the viewer not to break away from the screen.
Even if this was scripted as some have suggested, she is remarkably poised in describing her harrowing situation:
"I have managed to solve my problem, but some innocent children can't solve theirs, and they might die, commit suicide, or do whatever comes to mind."
Yemeni law holds that girls of any age are allowed to wed, and because of that, 52 percent of girls in Yemen are wed before the age of 18. However, the law also states that intercourse is prohibited until the child has reached puberty, a law that is ignored by many.
How generous of them.
In 2009, 10 year-old Nujood Ali successfully divorced after she was raped before the onset of puberty. Her case spurred action by the Supreme Council of Motherhood and Childhood, who proposed an age limit of 18 be set for marriage, which was knocked down to 17 when passed into law, and unfortunately, struck down the following day by parliamentary measures.
About Yemen, Sophie Ghaziri of Al Arabiya wrote in April, "Driven by poverty and a "traditional" way of thinking, girls under the age of eight can be seen in wedlock with children of their own by the time they hit puberty."
As Nada Al-Ahdal points out in her video, "There are many cases like that. Some children decided to throw themselves into the sea. They're dead, now."
This has long been a problem. Ghaziri highlights in her column that one in nine girls in the developing world will become child brides.
We can only hope that Nada's words will spur greater action by world leaders to halt the horrifying practice of child marriage and the human trafficking epidemic that feeds it.
-------------------
from Blindfold
The Girl Who Silenced the World For Five Minutes
Just twelve years old at the time, she seized her once-in-a-lifetime chance to tell every politician, businessman and journalist at the UN: “You are what you do, not what you say… I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words.” More than 21 million people have watched the speech on YouTube, where you can see that her address to silenced the entire plenary session. Severn’s young voice made it unmistakably clear why we all must take immediate action to save the environment.
Twenty years have passed and Severn is now 32 years old, married, a mother of two young boys and an outspoken activist for environmental justice. She has received the United Nations Environment Programme’s Global 500 Roll of Honour, published a book, studied ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, co-hosted a children’s television series that aired on Discovery Kids, and launched an internet-based think tank called The Skyfish Project which was integral to the creation of the “Recognition of Responsibility” pledge at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002.
On June 17th 2012, she returned to Rio de Janeiro to attend the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development. When I recorded Severn’s speech three days ago at an event hosted by WeCanada and later met her for a short interview (coming soon), I was deeply inspired to see that she had stayed true to the same values she expressed so powerfully in 1992. Though her scientific education has made her statements more refined and her age has added experience and wisdom, her belief in the power of intergenerational love is still at the heart of her message.
“Twenty years on I come back to the same argument I made as a child with my presence at the summit. The strongest moral imperative that we have to act and change is our children. It is because of our children that we will bring back the connection between cause and effect, between choices, the global situation, between privilege and responsibility. In identifying our moral imperative lies hope and our hope is love – love for our children,” she said.
HELL Yes!
thanks, Amanda Charchian
No comments:
Post a Comment