Craig Kielburger Quotes

I am positive that I would see the end of child labour around the world in my lifetime, as the poorest of the poor have realised that education is a tool that can empower them.

I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor.

More than 30 years ago, when I had embarked upon the fight against child labour, it was not even considered an issue worth any discussion. It was accepted as a way of life in India, much like it was in other countries. Today, no country or business or society can throw this issue away.

The fight against child slavery is the fight against traditional mindset, policy deficit, and lack of accountability and urgency for children across the globe.

We all ran barefooted on the dusty roads in our past, but now the Emperor wears shoes, and it is our responsibility to ensure that the barefooted child and the doting mother are afforded a holistic environment to realise their dreams and ambitions.

I dream for a world which is free of child labour, a world in which every child goes to school. A world in which every child gets his rights.

No child should be born to work at the cost of his childhood and freedom..

We as the governments, workers, employers and civil society must declare a war on child labour. This war cannot be won without strong, committed, coherent, and well-resourced worldwide movement. Equally needed is a genuine and active coordination between intergovernmental agencies at the highest level.

Elimination of child labour and access to education are like two sides of one coin. One cannot be achieved without the other.

We still have a soft approach on the perpetrators of crimes like worst forms of child labour.

Child labour is a global problem that needs a response from all sides. This means measures to help reduce poverty, improve education, enforce laws, improve employment prospects for adults, and ensure there are no benefits in employing children under working age.

We all need to be a part of the fight against injustice, insecurity and irresponsibility towards children and the world.

I really do think I can make a contribution in helping eliminate the disparity here in Australia and doing my small bit to help eliminate slavery around the world. These are huge issues for our fellow countrymen and our fellows in the world, where slavery is growing at an alarming rate, and it needs to be arrested.

If we can't begin to agree on fundamentals, such as the elimination of the most abusive forms of child labor, then we really are not ready to march forward into the future.

I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out.

No family should have to depend on the labor of its children to put food on the table and no person should be forced to work in captivity.

Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.

It's estimated that there may be two hundred and fifty million children in the world engaged in some form of exploitative child labour.

Childhood is not dead. Children were worse off when we were hunter-gatherers; they were threatened in medieval times and exploited during the Industrial Revolution. Was it any better in the time of Charles Kingsley or Charles Dickens?

In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.

… poor people deserve access to food, education, housing, and medical services

215 million are in child labor as a matter of survival. A world without child labor is possible with the right priorities and policies: quality education, opportunities for young people, decent work for parents, a basic social protection floor for all

I've been doing a lot of work on female rights, especially adolescent rights. I've been to a lot of schools where the UNICEF had set up villages in India, and it's an eye-opening experience.

We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?

I believe that children should not be made to work.