December 18, 2006: UNICEF Russia celebrates 60th Anniversary with children at the Human Rights Film Festival
On the same day UNICEF awarded prizes to the best 3 films from a total of over 130 films made by young filmmakers.
The visitors to the festival enjoyed two photo exhibitions prepared by UNICEF and the children of Chechnya. The 60th Anniversary Timeline illustrating UNICEF’s history and main achievements was displayed in the Foyer together with the ‘Chechnya through the eyes of Children.” Exhibition. Carel de Rooy, UNICEF Representative in the Russian Federation said at the opening ceremony: ‘Among the milestones during the 60 years of UNICEF’s work I would like to mention receiving of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1965, the adoption of the Convention for the Rights of the Child, and the first-ever World Summit for children in 1990.” He also mentioned another major events for UNICEF this year in Russia, when for the first time in the G7/G8 history eight children met eight G8 leaders for a substantive discussion in St Petersburg.
The Chechnya through the eyes of Children exhibition was composed of pictures taken by 10 Chechen children trained in photography by UNICEF with EC support, reflecting life in Chechnya as children see it. Carel de Rooy and Paul Vandoren, Deputy Head of the European Commission Delegation to Russia, and two young photographers from Grozny, Magomed Bamatkiriev, 14, and Amina Khaskhanova, 10, participated in the official opening of the exhibition.
In her numerous interviews to different media Amina Khaskhanova on behalf of all Chechen children repeated again and again: “We are tired of war. We want to live under a bright peaceful sky”. On 17 December UNICEF awarded a prize to the best film made about and for children, ‘Lullabies of the World’. The ‘International Human Rights Film Festival ‘Stalker’ will now travel to several Russian regions, to promote ideas and values of humanity throughout the Russian Federation.
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Katya Orlova, a young film director from an orphanage in Yaroslavl received a prize for a film called ‘Arsenal of Hope’. At the award ceremony Katya said: ‘A child in an orphanage does not have a mother, but has a dream. When we were discussing our film we thought that this dream is the most important thing for us and we made a film about this’.
“Through our pictures we wanted to show the life of people in post war Chechnya”, said Amina Khaskhanova, “the life of disabled children, of those who live in Temporary Accommodation Centres and poor families, and at the same time we wanted to show that our home is healing its wounds to become stronger and happier”, Amina added.