Oklahoma City- USA and Accra- Ghana Hosts International Youth Conference on Terrorism and Gangsterism is a signatory to and a leading participant in international agreements to protect children, the most important of which is the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention recognizes a range of rights related to children and child protection, and calls upon countries to honor their obligations to uphold these rights. The Convention is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the world, with all but two countries having ratified it. To make further progress on these commitments, Glory of God is hosting the International Youth Conference in USA and Ghana respectively. The conference is the first international gathering of its kind in Africa, builds on the growing international momentum emerging from recent inter-governmental, non-governmental and regional meetings, resolutions and declarations on various aspects of Terrorism and Violence among youths. Who is participating? Both conferences will bring together a diverse mix of delegates, including Ministers and representatives from countries with high rates of Terrorists attacks and interested governments, United Nations agencies, international organizations, youth, researchers, civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sectors. What are the objectives of the Conference? To bring to an end human Terrorism, Gangsterism and Violence among youths etc, President Kennedy once said, "A child miseducated is a child lost." Around the world today, we have more than 100 million children between 6 and 11 who will never attend school, in what UNICEF has accurately labelled a "silent catastrophe." Many of these children are roaming the streets aimlessly. It is said that the future is written on the faces of children. If so, that future is full of both hope and despair. To see the bright eyes of a young girl attending school for the first time is to see the prospects of an unlimited horizon. To see the world-weariness in the tired features of a twelve year old who had already known a lifetime of Terror is to understand the crushing horror placed on children. It takes but a glance to understand the simple truth: Terrorism and Gangsterism is simply wrong. It is wrong because it robs children of their potential, swapping their Hope for a brighter future. Gangsterism is wrong in the eyes of the world, because we know that children should be in school rather than street life. Gangsterism is wrong because it undermines the very core hope of securing lasting social and economic progress in the developing world. It is our responsibility -- national governments, non-governmental organizations, and donors alike -- to act to right these wrongs. As the head of a development agency, I believe deeply that development is a critical issue for the future of all the world's citizens, rich and poor alike. Understanding that fact, it is imperative we speak to the threat to this future posed by Gangsterism. Over the long run, a nation's greatest asset is human capital. Human capital does not simply materialize, nor can it be conveniently purchased. It must be cultivated over the long term. Human capital is not a commodity, but rather a distillation of our deepest values, our hopes, and our dreams. A healthy, educated, well-trained citizenry is development. How is human capital generated? Through education and the intellectual growth of our children. We all recognize, and this conference's Agenda for Action makes explicit, that Gangsterim and basic education are not related. They are opposite sides of the same coin. Children who are not in school can never be in school. Children whose parents see the value of education, and who are afforded the possibility of learning in a safe and appropriate school, will not be forced to make the devil's bargain of indulging in gansterism and violent life. But in too many places this remains an empty hope; far too many parents see no option but to try and generate enough income to keep the wolf away from the door for another day, thereby allowing their ward get out of school. This year, toward the goal of combating Gangsterim and voilent life, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) formally adopted basic education as one of our five fundamental goals in support of sustainable development. We have now made explicit what has been implicit in United States policy for many years: our fundamental principle that no person should reach adulthood without the basic skills that come from a decent education. This is more than just rhetoric: this year, the USAID plan to invest more than one hundred million dollars in basic education in developing countries around the world. And we expect to support this commitment over the years to come. We will focus our education resources on those countries, particularly the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa, in which a high proportion of the children who will be entering adulthood early in the next century do not currently have effective access to primary education. And under a commitment made at the Social Summit by the former First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton, we will invest heavily in assuring that children receive full and equal benefit from educational opportunities in their countries. I urge our partners, both in the donor community and among national governments, to do the same. When Gangsterism is replaced with universal basic education, when intellectual growth and curiosity replace the closed box of repetitive drudgery in countries throughout the world, we will see a flowering of the human potential and the human spirit that will lift even today's poorest countries. And if we fail to act, and allow Gangsterism rather than learning to continue to be the norm among poor children, we will sow the seeds of generation after generation of dispossessed with little recourse but desperation and violence. As Hillary Clinton recently said, "No nation can hope to succeed in our global economy if half of its people lack the opportunity and the right to make the most of their God-given promise." Let me be clear: we can never end Gangsterims and violent life among youths without offering in its place universal and high quality education. But education alone will not be enough to end this scourge. Throughout much of the world we see children at work within a stone's throw of a public school. If education is available to them, why do they not take advantage of it? Two words alone answer that question: poverty and exploitation. We know that many families believe their children must work. They live at the margins of the economy, barely able to generate enough income or grow enough food to survive. Many, especially the youngest children, do not survive. The answer to this problem is solid and sustained economic growth which is also broad-based, so that the fruits of the economy are widely shared among the poor. Without this growth, grinding poverty and the attendant need to act for today rather than plan for tomorrow, will remain the reality for millions. And children will remain out of school and without a viable future. This is why the United States invests heavily in support of economic growth in our development assistance programs. It is why we have made global food security a basic issue of both foreign and domestic policy. And it is why we believe that the growth of fair and open global trade offers the best opportunities for all the world's people to prosper. By reducing poverty around the world, we will reduce the pressures that drive parents to send their children out of school to work. But that in it will not end exploitation. We hear transparent arguments that children are employed because they have such nimble fingers, or other unique capacities that come from their size and agility. This is a lame excuse for an inexcusable truth: children are employed because they are more easily controlled, more readily exploited, and more handily discarded than adults who may be coming to understand the concept of their human rights. The United States government applauds efforts to bring these dark practices into the light of day where they can be seen by the international community for they are: a denial of everything that civilization values. The truth is devastating: in many cases, children are exploited because some adult can strip-mine these children's inner resources for wealth or for pleasure, until there is nothing left of value. The shell of that child can then just be discarded. This is not hyperbole; we know first- hand it is true. Organizations funded by my agency work with young prostitutes, boys and girls, some as young as ten, to get them off the streets, away from their pimps, and into schools. We have sponsored programs to get children out of bonded labor and, again, into schools. We have worked with street children to provide them with alternatives to begging and stealing. In numerous meetings, the international community has spoken out against the most intolerable forms of bad life. The United States believes that we have an obligation to do more than speak. This is why we support the programs I have described, why we fund the International Youth Conference Program for the Elimination of Gangsterism and street life among youth of today, and why USAID is supporting programs totaling more than six million dollars that work directly on same issues. It is also why the United States moved this year to enact into law a provision that bans the importation into our country of products made by forced or indentured labor. This issue unifies the American public like few others: we will not make use of such tainted goods, at whatever price. We are not naive about this. We recognize that only a small percentage of the world's child labor goes into products imported into the United States. But this is at heart a moral issue, and while we cannot speak for other countries, we have the right and the obligation to speak forcefully for ourselves. All of us are here because we share the belief that Gangsterism and violence among youths is wrong, and that we must all do our share to end it. We have before us an Agenda for Action that speaks to this belief, and that provides us with a common road map. Let us travel that route. And again, to quote former First Lady Hillary Clinton, let us "work together to provide the tools of opportunity so that every girl and boy... can look with confidence toward the future. That should be our promise to our children for the next century."