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M2 PRESSWIRE-14 December 1995-ANC: Machel's widow launches UNICEF 1996 children's report (C)1994-95 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD
Mozambique's former first lady Graca Machel launched Unicef's "The State of the World's Children" 1996 report at the Children's Museum in central Johannesburg on Monday afternoon.
Speaking after performances by two groups of pre-school children and the Afrika Cultural Trust dancers, Machel said much of the progress made through the United Nations Children Fund in establishing children's rights and development after World War II had been eroded over the past two decades.
War and civil war in the past ten year had killed at least two million children, maimed another four to five million and orphaned or separated from parents a further one million. Around 10 million children had been psychologically traumatised.
"The wounds of war are still fresh in the psyche of our children in Angola, South Africa and Mozambique," Machel said. For this reason reconstruction was not simply building infrastructure, but also development and installing social and moral values.
Justice Minister Dullah Omar told the...