Director General Eugen Brand and 17-year-old Crystal Dantzler Speak on UNICEF Panel
New York, Wednesday February 9 2011.
With the United Nations
- United Nations Draft Guiding Principles - "Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: The Rights of the Poor"
- 61st Annual Department of Public Information and the NGO community Conference
Eugen Brand, Director General of the International Movement ATD Fourth World and Crystal Dantzler, a young member of ATD Fourth World and representative of the Tapori Children’s Network in New York City, spoke on a panel on Extreme Poverty and Violence Against Children organized by ATD Fourth World, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children (Marta Santos Pais) and UNICEF at the United Nations.
Crystal, a 17-year-old native of Brooklyn who grew up contributing to and participating in ATD Fourth World actions such as Street Libraries, gave highlights from an October 2010 meeting with UNICEF Child Protection officials in which she and ATD Fourth World delegates from Haiti and Honduras participated. She shared personal testimony about violence and growing up in under-resourced communities in New York City. Eugen spoke about how extreme poverty in itself is a state of violence because it forces the most vulnerable people to live in unbearable situations of insecurity, deprivation, exclusion and stigmatization. He underscored the importance of learning methods of overcoming violence from the experiences of people living in poverty, who face such issues constantly. Susan Bissell of UNICEF and the Permanent Representative of Bangladesh also spoke in the panel, which was organized in the context of the UN Commission for Social Development.
In concluding remarks Marta Santos Pais reiterated the importance of Crystal’s participation which had given a unique insight into the perspective of issues experienced by young people facing challenging situations across the world.
Among those from ATD Fourth World in New York that attended were members of Crystal’s family and other young people who came to participate and support Crystal. The young people took part in a debriefing after the event in which they discussed their reactions, their past involvement with ATD Fourth World, and their aspirations for future work. This was part of an ongoing project surrounding young people in New York City.
In New York, Eugen Brand met with local members of ATD Fourth World in addition to government missions to the UN and UN agencies to reinforce the need for global anti poverty efforts to harness the experience and efforts of people in extreme poverty.
Following New York he will continue on to Haiti where he will take messages from New York members of ATD Fourth World and dialogue with young people on how Crystal conveyed their important message to the United Nations.
