To bring to an end human trafficing, Child prostitution, child exploitation 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 labeled a "silent catastrophe." Many of these children are toiling right now in dingy sweatshops and enduring backbreaking labor. 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 work is to understand the crushing burden poverty places on children.

It takes but a glance to understand the simple truth: child labor is simply wrong. Child labor is wrong because it robs children of their potential, swapping the meager wages of menial labor for any hope they might experience a brighter future.

Child labor is wrong in the eyes of the world, because we know that children should be in school rather than at work. Child labor is wrong because it undermines the very core hope of securing lasting social and economic progress in the developing world.

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 child labor.

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? Though education and the intellectual growth of our children. We all recognize, and this conference's Agenda for Action makes explicit, that child labor and basic education are deeply related. They are opposite sides of the same coin. Children who are at work cannot be at 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 forced to make the devil's bargain of sending their children to work before their time. 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.

This year, toward the goal of combatting child labor, 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, we plan to invest more than one hundred million dollars in basic education in developing countries around the world. And we expect to maintain 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 First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton, we will invest heavily in assuring that girls 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 child labor 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 labor 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.

The most egregious forms of exploitation -- child prostitution, slavery, work in life-threatening activities -- demand and have received universal condemnation. 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 founded by my agency working with young prostitutes, boys and girls, 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 child labor. 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 Labor Organization's International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor, and why USAID is supporting programs totalling more than six million dollars that work directly on issues of child labor.

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 child 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 child labor 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."

Both conferences will bring together a diverse mix of delegates, including Ministers and representatives from countries with high rates of youth’s suicides and Child Labor and interested governments, United Nations agencies, international organizations, youth, researchers, civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector.

INFORMATION FOR INVITED DELEGATES

Prepared by the Conference Secretariat

DATES AND LOCATIONS the conference on Youth suicide and prevention strategy (YSAPS) will commence on 2ND of DECEMBER through 5TH, 2009 While the International Conference on Child Labor (ICOGB) will commence on 7TH-10TH DECEMBER through 2009 .in Bissau, the capital city of Guinea-Bissau, West Africa.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE: All participants will receive program schedule for both event by post before the date of the event.

Participants can also request for program schedule at the entrance of both events.

Venue for Youth’s Suicide and prevention Strategy Hands that cares Conference hall in Minneapolis, Minnesota United State.

This year, toward the goal of combatting child labor, 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, we plan to invest more than one hundred million dollars in basic education in developing countries around the world. And we expect to maintain 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 First Lady of the United States, MRS BARRACK OBAMA, we will invest heavily in assuring that girls 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 child labor 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 labor 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

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 at work 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 the entire world's people to prosper.

By reducing poverty around the world, we will reduce the pressures that drive parents to send their children to work. Bu 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.

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As our First Lady 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 child labor 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.

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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 child labor. 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 Labor Organization's International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor, and why USAID is supporting programs totalling more than six million dollars that work directly on issues of child labor.

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 child labor. This issue unifies the American public like few others: we will not make use of such tainted goods, at whatever price.