Ewan McGregor in plea for poor children

Published on 04/07/2005 00:34

THE Scottish actor Ewan McGregor yesterday made an impassioned plea for the G8 leaders to hear the voices of children from the world's poorest countries as he opened a summit on behalf of the United Nations children's fund, UNICEF.

The star of Trainspotting and Star Wars joined children from across the globe for the launch of the UNICEF C8 children's summit in Dunblane. McGregor said: "Next week at the G8 summit, the eight leaders are going to have ... the power to make extraordinary change in the world, truly to make poverty history. We want to make sure that they are concentrating on issues concerning child poverty."

McGregor is a UK ambassador for UNICEF and has seen child poverty at first hand in that role. He said urgent action was needed to stop the statistic of one preventable child death in the world every three seconds.

The UNICEF C8 summit is taking place at the Hilton Dunblane Hydro Hotel over the next two days and it will produce a manifesto of demands and recommendations tomorrow.

Children taking part in the C8 summit in Dunblane are aged 11 to 18 with some coming from the world's poorest countries, including Cambodia, Moldova, Yemen, Sierra Leone, Lesotho and Bolivia. They are also being joined by teenagers from the well-off G8 countries.

However, it is unclear how the UNICEF children's summit, which is meeting just down the road from Gleneagles, will be able to get its findings through the security surrounding the Perthshire hotel.

McGregor said UNICEF had attempted to arrange meetings with the G8 leaders or their wives. He said he remained hopeful a meeting could be arranged to communicate the C8 conclusions to Gleneagles.

The actor was joined on stage by the Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, 17, who said she was awed by how articulate the UNICEF-appointed ambassadors were. Nabil Afef-Al-Yafai from the Yemen urged the G8 representatives to hear the manifesto of the world's children. "If they don't listen to children, who will they listen to?" he asked.