Dear Ambassadors of Children's Rights, Chairman Lo, Interior Minister Su, Vice Education Minister Fang, Staff of the Children Rights Association of Taiwan, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen: Good Morning!
First of all, I would like to extend my warmest welcome to the 90 ambassadors of children's rights from Taiwan and other countries. I also want to express my heartfelt respect to all hard-working staff from the Children Rights Association of Taiwan.
I am genuinely delighted to meet with our little but energetic ambassadors in the Presidential Office today. I believe that the intense and vigorous discussions you had during the three-day summit have yielded concrete results. The plentiful conclusions reached in the summit can be reference materials for government agencies if they are relevant to government policies. In my mind, you are all little opinion leaders defending children's rigths in the world.
I still remember my first meeting with ambassadors of children's rights joining a similar summit in 2001. During that meeting, some Taiwanese children voiced support for children's rights. Although they looked somewhat inexperienced in their speech, they were very serious to get their messages across and grab the attention of adults. In 2002, I met with another group of ambassadors of children's rigths. To my surprise, an ambassador, who belonged to the Tao tribe in Taitung's Orchid Island, made an appeal to me regarding the environmental problem caused by nuclear waste. The ambassador's appeal caused a stir in the meeting. That's why I have often been impressed by small ambassadors because they, though little, do have great visions.
I have noticed that the theme of this year's summit is "Children Help Children." The topic moves me deeply because it has always been my belief that human rigths form the foundation of our nation. Human rights do not only mean the freedom to exercise our rights. What's more important is that we have to learn to respect others or even stand up to help others exercise their rights through removing obstacles to the improvement of human rights. In doing so, we are all partners in building a beautiful world.
Great power resides in children's solidarity. Although you, little ambassadors, are from different countries and have different skin colors, I see in all of you the glory of humanity. I believe that all of you can help spread the concept of "Children Help Children," first initiated by the summit. You can encourage children all over the world to stand up and think about how to help children subject to wars, persecutions, poverty, diseases, violence and abuses. I hope that all children can grow up in a healthy environment and that the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child can prevail.
Taiwan passed the Child and Youth Welfare Law in 2003 to incorporate the concept of children being "persons" into the law. In the past, the law treated children as things to be protected; now children have become "persons" that have their own rights. The new law marked the government's progress in enhancing the rights of children and youths. In April this year, we launched the "Dear Kids: Children's Welfare Account" to provide better care for our children. I personally supported the project by acting in a TV commercial promoting the account and served as the spokesman for this welfare program. We hoped to call on the public to pay attention to and care about the welfare of our children. Many signs show that our efforts to protect and improve children's rights have made progress.
I would like to express my welcome and thanks to children from 18 countries. Some of you live in Taiwan because your parents work here. Some of you traveled from Thailand, Malaysia, Nicaragua and Brazil to join this summit in Taiwan. Your enthusiastic participation in the summit gave Taiwan's children an opportunity to learn from their foreign friends. I believe that you have become good friends over the past four days and that in the future, you will be able to work together to help more needy children in the world.
I hope that the summit will become part of the beautiful memory of our little ambassadors. I want to make a wish with all of you—that we may be devoted to the improvement of children's human rights. Let us pray that the world will no longer see war, disease, poverty, violence and abuses. Let's also pray that we will have a really peaceful world where people have pure hearts as children do. In closing, I would like to wish all our little ambassadors health and happiness. Thank you!