奥黛丽赫本1989年在联合国的演讲：为了孩子们

考研英语来源：文都教育 2017-04-10　

I must say that up until a year ago, before I was given the great privilege of becoming a volunteer for UNICEF, I used to be overwhelmed by a sense of desperation and helplessness when watching television and reading about the misery of the developing world’s children and their mothers. If I feel less helpless today, it is because I have seen what is being done by UNICEF and many other marvelous organizations and agencies, by the churches, by governments and most of all, with very little help, by people themselves.

我必须承认就在一年前，也就是我有幸成为联合国儿童基金组织志愿者之前，每当我在电视和报纸上获悉发展中国家儿童和母亲的悲惨境遇时，我都会沉浸在巨大的绝望和无助之中。如果说现在我不会感到那么无助了，那是因为我看到了联合国儿童基金组织及其他伟大组织、教会、政府都在努力帮助他们，更重要的是人们在以自己微薄的力量努力进行着自助。

The effects of the monstrous burden of debt have made the poor even poorer and have fallen most heavily on the neediest, and those whom it has damaged the most have been women and children. We must do more about the alarming state in which the children in the developing world are only just surviving, especially when we know that the finances needed are minimal compared to the global expenditure of this world; when we know that less than half of one percent of today’s world economy would be the total required to eradicate the worst aspects of poverty and would meet their basic human needs over the next 10 years. In other words, there is no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will.

沉重的债务负担重重地压在了那些最需要我们帮助的人肩上，它使得穷人愈穷，但最终饱受摧残、伤害最大的往往是妇女和儿童。我们还应该为那些处于危机边缘的发展中国家的儿童做更多的事情，他们中的一些人现在仅仅处于能活命的状态。尤其是当我们了解到所需的资金与世界开支相比微乎其微之后，其实只要拿出不到世界经济0.5%的资金就足以根除地球上最贫穷的状况，满足这些人在今后10年的基本生活需求。换句话说，我们并不缺少人手，我们缺少的是人们的意愿。

The question I am most frequently asked is: “what do you really do for UNIGEF?” Clearly, my task is to inform, to create awareness of the needs of children. To fully understand the problems of the state of the world’s children, it would be nice to be an expert on education, economies, ...politics, religions, traditions and culture. I am none of these things, but I am a mother.

人们最常问我的一个问题是：“你为联合国儿童基金真正做了些什么? ”很明显，我的职责是通过自己的努力，使社会了解和意识到儿童的需要。如果我是一位通晓教育、经济、政治、宗教、文化和传统的专家的话，我将更能了解当今世界上的儿童问题。然而我不是，我只是一位母亲。

There is, unhappily, a need for great advocacy for children~children haunted by undernourishment, disease and death, and you don’t have to be a financial whiz to look into so many little faces with diseases, glazed eyes to know that this is the result of critical malnutrition. One of the worst symptoms of which is Vitamin A deficiency that causes comeal lesions resulting in partial or total blindness followed within a few weeks by death. Every year there are as many as 500,000 such cases in countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, and Ethiopia. Today there are in fact millions of children at risk of going blind. Little wonder that I and many other UNICEF volunteers travel the world to raise funds before it is too late, but also to raise awareness and to combat a different kind of darkness-a darkness people find themselves in through lack of information on how easy it is to reach out and help these children.

遗憾的是，现在的儿童事业仍需要很大的支持，这些孩子饱受营养不良、疾病和死亡的威胁。你不需要知道确切数字，你只要看着这些瘦小的脸和木然呆滞的眼睛，因为这些都是严重营养不良的表现。导致这种病最重要的原因就是缺乏维生素A,这将引起角膜损伤甚至于眼睛部分或完全失明，几周之后可能就会死去。在诸如印度尼西亚、孟加拉国、印度、菲律宾和埃萨尔比亚等国家，每年出现的此类病例多达50万例。如今，有成百万的儿童正在受到失明的威胁。这也是在事情发展到无可挽回之前，我和其他许多联合国儿童基金组织的志愿者奔赴世界各国努力筹集资金的原因。与此同时，我们也要唤醒人们与另一种形式的黑暗作斗争的意识——人们因为缺乏信息，所以不知道向这些孩子伸出援助之手是多么的轻松简单。

I have known UNICEF a long time. For almost 45 years ago, I was one of the tens of thousands of starving children in war-ravaged Europe to receive aid from UNICEF immediately after our liberation that freed us from hunger, repression and constant violence, when we were reduced to near total poverty as is the developing world today. For it is poverty that is at the root of all their suffering—the not having- not having the means to help themselves. That is what UNICEF is all about, helping people to help themselves. Giving them the aid to develop. Thereby allowing them to become self-reliant and live in dignity.

我很早之前就知道联合国儿童基金组织了。大约45年前，战争结束，我们刚从饥饿、压迫和暴力中解放出来，在饱受战争摧残的欧洲大陆上，我便是成千上万需要联合国儿童基金组织帮助的饥饿的儿童之一。那时我们一贫如洗，正如今天的发展中国家一样。正因为贫穷是人类遭受苦难的根源，这些身无长物之人没有办法进行自助。而联合国儿童基金组织的作用正在于此，帮助那些需要帮助之人实现自助，给予他们发展的帮助，使他们可以独立而有尊严地活着。

Unlike droughts or floods or earthquakes, the tragedy of poverty cannot easily be captured by the media and brought to the attention of the world-wide public. It is happening not in any one particular place, but in slums and shanties and neglected rural communities across two continents. It is happening not at any one particular time, but over long years of increasing poverty which have not been featured in the nightly news but which have changed the lives of many millions of people.

与旱灾、洪灾和地震灾害不同，贫困的悲惨画面不易被媒体捕捉，从而不能引起全世界的关注。它并非发生在某个特定的地方，而是在跨越两个大陆的贫民窟、棚户区和被忽视的农村地区广泛地存在;它也并非发生在某个特定的时候，而是困扰人们多年并不断恶化。这些虽未在晚间新闻里被报道，但却威胁着上百万人的生存。

UNICEF’s business is children, not the workings of the international economy. In its every-day work in over 100 developing nations UNICEF is brought up against a face of today’s international economic problems which is not seen in the corridors of financial power, not reflected in the statistics of debt service ratios, not seated at the conference tables of debt negotiations. It is in the face of a child. It is the young child whose growing mind and body is susceptible to permanentdamage from even temporary deprivation. The human brain and body are formed within the first five years of life and there is no second chance. It is the young child whose individual development today and whose social contribution tomorrow are being shaped by the economics of now. It is the young child who is paying the highest of all prices.

联合国儿童基金组织的工作中心是儿童而不是国际经济。联合国儿童基金组织每天都在全球100多个发展中国家开展工作。在这些工作中，联合国儿童基金组织遇到了一些国际经济问题，这些问题不会在金融大亨的走廊里看到，不会在债券汇率的数据中反映出来，也不会在债务谈判桌上被提及，这些问题反映在孩子们的脸上: 儿童正在发育的身心正在受到哪怕是暂时性贫困的伤害。人类的大脑和身体在5岁之前发育完成而且不可能有第二次机会。正是现在的经济援助决定着孩子们今天的发展和明天对社会的贡献，而也正是这些稚嫩的孩子们在为此付出最昂贵的代价。

There is so much we cannot do. We cannot give the children back their parents, but we can return to them the most basic of human rights, the right to health, to tenderness, to life. Thank you.

有很多事情我们确实爱莫能助。我们不能还给孩子他们失去的双亲，但是我们可以给予孩子最基本的人权，健康的权利，享受人间关爱、享受人生的权利。谢谢大家。