TODOS SON INOCENTES - ALL ARE INNOCENT

People signing this manifest want to raise awareness about the daily suffering of million children in a world more and more bipolarized for economical reasons. A world where poverty and the marginality which goes with it far from receeding, increases everyday. A world we consider terrible for our own children, but watch, without really seeing , with total indolence for other children. The forgotten ones.

Disadvantaged children. Poor, sick, hungry, exploited, slave children. Orphan children with a million of parents. Children who will die alone, with the added grief of theie parents, we, first world citizens, looking away. Children who have known just hunger, sickness and slavery.

That´s why the undersigned, free men and women, take the decision of fighting actively against any kind of child exploitation and/or slavery, and consider illegal and aberrant the following situations.

• Servitude for economical debts.
• Forced labour.
• The recruiting and use of underaged in wars.
• Sexual exploitation of underaged (prostitution and pornographic stuff).
• Using underaged in illegal activities.
• .Any kind of work that because of its nature or the context it has to be done, implies risks for the child´s health, security or ethics.

Because of the above mentioned we declare our country a space free of:

• Child slavery, prostitution and pornographiy.
• The use of children in drug trade and other crimes.
• The use of children in wars and armed conflicts.
• Any kind of work that might be harmful for the physical, psychic or moral health of children.
• We actively commit ourselves to fight the causes that generate child slavery such as:
• Poverty.
• Family violence.
• Cultural patterns.
• Social permissiveness.
• Lack of opportunities.
• The lack of quality in education and attention for children, and the failure to comply with compulsory education.
• The lack and even the contradictions of regulations on these matters.

We ask Governments, Institutions and Regional Parliaments, All the countries and the European Union
To actively condemn and fight any kind of child labour. To accomplish this they should pass laws to favour fair trade and take the necessary measures to stop products made by slave children be imported into Europe.

As a final homage.

We sign the Declaration of April,16 1995, as International Day Against Child Slavery, to commemrate the death of Iqbal Masih, an enslaved child, an activist of the Liberation Front against forced labour in Pakistan. He was murdered by the “carpet mafia” on April,16,1995.

Finally we remind those who may read and assume this manifest that

“Children must be protected against any sort of abandonment, cruelty and exploitation”
(Article 9 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child 1959)

To all the above expressed the undersigned commit ourselves.