- ATD Fourth World

In this world day of the global human family,
we are close to all of you and feel a strong kinship with you:

Those of you who search for friends for your children, and search for a future for them;
Those of you who feel the humiliation of no one coming to visit you;
Those of you who are deprived of encounters with people who exchange news, share their experience, and give each other advice.

Those of you who are on no list that would give a right to tomorrow;
Those of you who spend restless nights, thinking with anguish of your young people
taken in by violence and idleness.

Those of you who are driven out of your neighborhoods
even though you were the first ones to settle there,
and where you wanted to have places for people to gather
and for creativity with everyone’s participation.

Those of you who speak a language seen as foreign by people around you,
and who are searching for words to go beyond the anger
and express the hope of those who have neither rights nor land.

Those of you who are forced to leave your family
with the hope of finding something to sustain them, far away,
even though you fight so much
to ensure that human activity, citizenship, and family life do not remain privileges.

You all are family to us and we are your heirs.
We are heirs of that union between those who have been swept away by history
and those who have faced up to the barbarism at all times.

Some of these heroic figures remained in the shadow; others were highly celebrated;
their lives, which they have given,
have forged our memory and sharpen our thirst for justice.
From the unbearable conditions of poverty, they made germinate the seeds of solidarity which people never thought existed.
It was the joining of Mahatma Gandhi with the untouchables,
that of Martin Luther King with the descendants of slaves,
and that of Father Joseph Wresinski - who gathers us all - with “the victims of hunger, ignorance and violence.”

He taught us that we are your heirs, and we are your witnesses.
With him, we dare assert
that extreme poverty should not be the fate of anyone,
that you are defenders of human rights,
so that at last the global human family
unite right and community,
justice and kindness,
truth and forgiveness.

Father Joseph Wresinski continues to teach us today
that we are your heirs.

On this 15th of May 2005,
International day of the human family,
we proclaim that we will remain your witnesses.

You, the children, and you, the young people, fortified by this inheritance, you can be great propagators of liberty.
By your parents, you know the secret of this liberty the world is so much looking for.
This new liberty does not come by weapons, money, prevailing knowledge, or partisan interests.
This liberty carries within it what is most valuable in each human being,
their recognition and their future.
With all the audacity of your hearts and intelligence, this liberty can tear down all borders,
and revive everyone’s trust in the global human family.