VIEW FROM THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
their donations to the agencies working for children’s welfare. However, while it could be true that some children have dire needs in many parts of the world, even in Europe and the Americas, repeatedly displaying the same miserable images of children is inhuman, unfair and a violation of human rights. In fact, in many cases, the societies with those miserable children may not even know how the funds were being utilized by aid agencies through such children’s misery and despair. I believe that such practice should be stopped or changed. In the same vein, it is important for Africa and Asia to utilize the adage
that “Charity Begins at Home”. In this case, local media in African and other developing countries should work to reverse this negative imagery by advertising and donor agencies. Let the local media focus on the successes of the services to the children done in post-independence periods, highlighting the history and the political, economic and cultural successes so far realized. It is true that, taking the example of what the American writer Adam Hochschild says in King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Africans
were not expected to recover quickly from the physical and psychological effects of the colonial period, in which it was easy to find the hands of “naughty inventors”, for example, cut off to nip their zeal to invent, particularly those who were found attempting to make weapons of some sort. The effect of this psychological terrorism has left an indelible mark on the people from generation to generation. In the effort to liberate the media images of Africa, I have followed with
great interest the recent discussions in South Africa that seek to idolize the local development efforts by the Africans themselves. As His Majesty King Mswati III of Swaziland told the Members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Executive Committee in Mbabane in 2010, the people in developing countries also desire to be part of the “first world”. This means there has to be full encouragement and support from the international media. This means that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and its agencies, the Commonwealth and the rest are expected to support the countries that were, according to Walter Rodney, underdeveloped by Europe. While the
The Secretary-General’s
The group of young people who participated in this year’s CPA Commonwealth Day programme, pictured with the Chairperson of the CPA Executive Committee, Rt Hon. Sir Alan Haselhurst, MP, (seated, second left), and the Secretary-General (seated, second right).
12 | The Parliamentarian | 2013: Issue One
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