Workshop 4
9.00 a.m.The inarticulate voice of the child: freeing the body
“Those who have never looked a child of Nature in the eye have never seen anything paternal or maternal, and have never seen anything divine […] however many altars they may have worshipped at […].
I love little things, I love infinitely small, mute things, that gaze at us with courage”.
Probably the most upsetting thing is the sweetness of the smile on the face of children whose playmates are poverty, suffering and disease. Tears are somehow to be expected, but not smiles. Smiles we find deeply disturbing.
What springs to mind are certain reflections on the “bare life” that the philosopher Giorgio Agamben propounded a few years ago, basing his ideas on the Aristotelian distinction between the zoe, the simple fact of living, common to all living creatures, and life as bios, that is to say, peculiar to the individual, the human being, who, above and beyond the simple natural fact of living, is oriented towards the community in an existence of superior quality, the aim of which is to live in accordance with goodness.
Aristotle interpreted the transition from zoe to bios as a later stage of the development from “voice” to language”. “Voice”, in fact, is a signifier of pain and pleasure, and is shared in common by all living creatures, while “language” exists for the manifestation of right and wrong, and is peculiar to Man alone.
It would appear that millions of children, as opposed to those who have all their rights safeguarded – in the first place the right to health, – have only the “voice”, the “bare life”, and do not possess that right to language that entitles them to enjoy an existence of superior quality with all the additional benefits of a socially organized, human life, lived in accordance with the principle of goodness.
The thousand and one offences that the children of the Earth suffer as a result of hunger, exploitation and denial of the right to education merge together and plunge these children into a pit of misery even deeper than that of disease or that resulting from malnutrition, poverty, and war, from being condemned by the modern economic system to expression of the “voice” alone.
For millions of children and adolescents, freeing the body still means freeing it of the primary forms of suffering, of the hardships and privations that undermine the simple zoe, denying access to any of the superior forms of existence, peculiar to the individual, such as those afforded by freedom, justice and creativity.
Chairperson
Peter Newell
(UK) An advocate for children’s rights, he is Coordinator of the “Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children”. In England, he is Coordinator of the UK “Children are Unbeatable Alliance”, campaigning for the abolition of corporal punishment. With his partner, Rachel Hodgkin, he prepared UNICEF’s Implementation Handbook on the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He is also Adviser to the European Network of Ombudspeople for Children and Co-Chair of the newly-formed NGO Advisory Council for follow-up to the UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children.
Panel
Vincenzo Boffi
(Italy) Secretary General of the Eni Foundation, recently created by Eni, which aims at promoting and implementing solidarity initiatives in Italy and overseas, particularly in favour of children and the elderly. Among its priorities, the Foundation has decided to concentrate its efforts initially on safeguarding children’s health, focusing attention on a number of the main diseases which afflict children in the areas where Eni operates and jeopardise their growth and mature development. Through the Eni Foundation, Eni aims to make a tangible contribution to solving some of the significant problems of today’s world, within the framework of its ongoing commitment to creating sustainable value.
Dominique Corti
(Italy/Uganda) Dominique Corti, physician and President of the “Piero and Lucille Corti” Foundation Onlus, was born in St. Mary’s Hospital in Lacor, Uganda, where she grew up. Today, she continues the humanitarian work initiated by her parents in 1961. In 2006 the hospital provided treatment and care for 288,080 patients, half of whom were children under the age of six. From 1966 to 2005, it offered refuge every night to thousands of children fleeing from the incursions of rebels, with a peak of 15,000 people at the most difficult times. Today the hospital employs 570 people, all of them Ugandan.
Gianpaolo Donzelli
(Italy) Professor of Paediatrics and Director of the Neonatal Medicine and Preventive Paediatrics Department at the Meyer University Hospital, Florence. The Meyer Children’s Hospital has created an international network to accept children from all over the world for treatment.
Maurizio Focchi
(Italy) President of “Cittadinanza onlus”, a non profit-making association founded in 1999 which works in collaboration with the World Health Organization to provide health care to those suffering from psychiatric disorders in poverty stricken countries where mental illness is often given low priority in health service programmes. The name itself of the association (in English “Citizenship”) illustrates that it gives primary importance to the basic human and civil rights of all those suffering from mental illness; rights which even today are often neglected and denied, thus relegating the mentally ill to a position of secondclass citizens. “Cittadinanza” is presently carrying out projects in Serbia, Albania and India.
Gino Strada
(Italy) Founder of Emergency, a nonprofit, humanitarian organization dedicated to providing medical and surgical assistance to the civilian victims of war. Since its beginnings, Emergency has been active in 13 countries, building hospitals, rehabilitation and health centres, and accident and emergency clinics. To date, more than 2.3 million people have received medical care at Emergency’s health centres. Emergency is also committed to the promotion of Peace. Its anti-landmine campaigning efforts in the mid ‘90s played a key role in raising awareness of the landmine issue in Italy. 29 Lunedì 29 ottobre Monday 29 October