Honorary Graduates
Orations and responses
Madame Graça Machel
Oration given on 10 July 1997
Chancellor: the Senate of the University has resolved
that the degree of Doctor of the University be conferred on MADAME Graça
MACHEL.
It is a commonplace to remark that the peoples of the world -- or some of
them -- are increasingly pressing their claims to have their 'rights' recognised
and fulfilled -- their human rights. And, of course, so they should.
It is rather less of a commonplace to notice that most of human rights talk is
about 'citizens' -- adults in their political roles in relation to their
governments -- and to ask what is being done by the world's adults to ensure the
human rights of their children.
We say 'their' children: children belong to adults. They have not
yet gained the strength to assert their moral rights as human beings: they
are our dependants. How do they fare if they happen to be born into a
society which imposes long hours of toil instead of schooling; bonded labour
rather than freedom; or -- above all -- warfare and civil strife instead of
peace and what all of us here can comfortably define as 'normal life'?
It is also common to consider the sufferings of African peoples -- whether
from famine, civil war or even virtual genocide -- and less common to recognise
the achievements to be found there. In particular, Africa has offered to
the world an increasingly distinguished group of international public servants
-- as well as national and continental political leaders. The greatest --
the most universally and sincerely admired -- man in the world is an African and
has been elected President of South Africa. His presence at this ceremony
as Madame Machel's guest brings yet more pleasure and honour to the University,
to add to that which we feel in awarding our honorary doctorate to her.
Without doubt, such African international figures as the new Secretary-General
of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan (who is from Ghana) draw some of their
inspiration from this unparalleled example of human fortitude and moral purpose.
Today, Sir, the University is proud to bring together these two themes of the
tragic mistreatment of all too many children in the world and the growing
contribution to the world community of international public servants from Africa
by conferring our honorary doctorate on Madame Graça Machel of Mozambique.
The link is this: -- Madame Machel has been appointed by the
Secretary-General of the United Nations as his Expert on the Impact of Armed
Conflict on Children. She has co-ordinated a major two-year international
research project and task force on the subject. At least fifteen research
studies and reports were undertaken on different aspects. One of these was
produced by this University's Dean of the School of Law, Francoise Hampson (on
"Legal Protection Afforded to Children Under International Humanitarian Law")
and another by the director of this University's Children's Centre, Carolyn
Hamilton (on "Children and War: Humanitarian Law and Children's Rights").
We operate here at Essex a 'Children's Legal Centre' which is a unique
collaboration between our academic lawyers (specialising in the laws affecting
children) and a national charity. It offers practical help (including
legal representation) to troubled children, using in particular a phone line
advice service. This operates here on this campus and places the
University's expertise in this legal field directly at the children's service.
Practical research studies on children's rights arise directly from these
contacts. Our colleagues involved believe that there is nothing like it in
the world.
So, working for children's legal rights ranges from aspects of (say) divorce
and custody in Britain to child labour, child prostitution or the mutilation
(for circumcision) of girls elsewhere in the world.
Within the range of Madame Machel's UN project on 'the Impact of Armed
Conflict', the theme of children's rights includes the now well-known world-wide
horror of an estimated 110 million small land mines still lying around in the
world waiting to blow the legs off children, years after some war is over, when
they go out to work on their parents' crops, to tend to animals or even just to
run and play. This appalling problem is known to us from Cambodia in
particular but is also a major concern of Madame Machel's Mozambique and also of
Angola. A recent international conference was told that (at the present
rate of clearance) it will take a thousand years to remove the existing mines.
But the main cause of death and suffering amongst children during warfare is not
bullets or mines -- it is the loss of protection and support after adult
relatives have been killed or separated from their children...the lack of food
and health care are the main killers. However, international humanitarian
law emphasises adult 'civilians' rather than children. The UN's
International Convention on the Rights of the Child (which was promulgated in
1990) needs strengthening.
The Machel Report on children and warfare was received by the UN on the
symbolic date of November 11th (Armistice Day) last year. It quickly
stimulated a Draft Optional UN Protocol for member states to consider and
ratify.
Madame Machel's presence here today, Sir, helps us to mark this University's
expert work in this often harrowing field, just as that work has helped her to
produce the Machel Report to the United Nations with such outstanding enthusiasm
and flair.
Graça Machel joined in her country's armed struggle to gain independence from
Portugal in the Seventies. That independence had then to be defended in
the Eighties against the invasion and terror mounted against the new Mozambique
by the minority white governments of South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
As a schools organiser and, later, Minister of Education in the new government,
she saw most of what schools and clinics the new nation possessed destroyed by
the invaders and over a quarter of a million Mozambique children made orphans.
She led a national relief body which placed orphans in village homes while also
promoting women's health and teaching projects in the villages.
In 1975 she married Samora Machel who became Mozambique's first President in
that same year. He was killed in a plane crash in 1986. She has
retained a unique eminence and standing within her country and gained world-wide
recognition outside it. She has used these advantages to the full in the
cause of the education, health care and cultural enrichment of the people of
Mozambique -- above all the women and children. Beyond Mozambique, she has
served other African children: for example, working for the UN agency
UNICEF with children in Rwanda, horribly damaged by the massacres there three
years ago.
The university is proud to honour today, Sir, a distinguished leader of her
country and of Africa -- and an eminent international public servant. One
specialist in the field describes her as a "tireless and indefatigable lobbyist
of all governments for international human rights".
She particularly represents and promotes, with valuable effect, the
grievously neglected idea of children's basic moral rights. There is room
for some debate about the political and social rights of children and young
persons -- for example the age of voting or parents' or school teachers'
controls over them. But their moral right to be protected from physical
and psychological damage -- particularly in times of general violence or war --
cannot be doubted. This University's Human Rights Centre and Children's
Legal Centre are our own special commitment. Their work helps to make the
University's recognition today of such a leading international figure in this
great cause also special.
Chancellor, I present to you: Graça Simbine Machel.