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Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian activist and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is one of the most influential international voices in the defense of children’s rights. For decades, he has fought against child labor, slavery, and all forms of child exploitation, placing children’s freedom and dignity at the heart of a civic commitment that has transcended borders, religions, and cultures. His experience stems above all from his direct encounters with the victims: children deprived of an education, forced to work, scarred by war or poverty, yet still capable of imagining a different future.

In his address at the World Meeting on Human Fraternity, Satyarthi traces the deepest meaning of fraternity precisely to this ability to dream. The stories of the Pakistani girl who sews soccer balls and dreams only of being able to play soccer, or of the young Syrian refugee who wants to become an engineer so he can return to rebuild his home and his country, show how hope can survive even under the most dire circumstances. But above all, they show that fraternity cannot remain an abstract concept: it begins when the suffering of others is recognized as something that concerns us.

For Satyarthi, in fact, all children are “our children,” regardless of nationality, political affiliation, or religion. It is from this awareness that his call to “globalize compassion” arises. Not compassion understood as pity or benevolence, but as a force capable of driving us to act. In the context of the Meeting, his message thus becomes an invitation to transform fraternity into concrete responsibility: in institutions, in politics, in civil society, in religions, and in daily life. Because being brothers and sisters means, first and foremost, never considering another’s pain as something foreign to us.

Excerpt from the speech by Kailash Satyarthi – Indian activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

A dream is light. A dream is the strength in your legs. A dream is the journey. A dream is the milestone, and a dream is the ultimate goal you reach.

I was once traveling in Pakistan, which is no easy feat for an Indian. But I have never believed in borders. There is only one humanity. Pakistani children are my children. Indian children are my children. As I sat there with a group of children, I noticed a girl. She was sewing soccer balls. Drops of blood would often trickle from her fingers, and she would lick them off and then go back to work, because she couldn’t let her blood stain the balls.

I asked her, “My daughter, if you were free, what dreams would you have?” She replied, “What is a dream?” I asked her again, “If a miracle suddenly happened and they asked you what you’d like to become?” After a pause, she answered, “I’d like to play soccer one day.”

I’ll share another story. I was visiting and working with some local organizations in Germany, at a Syrian refugee camp, together with my wife. I saw a boy in a wheelchair, about 10 or 11 years old, with a very intense gaze. I knew he had lost both his legs and his father in a bomb attack, and that his mother had gone missing somewhere along the way. I asked him, “Son, what do you want to do with your life once you finish your studies here in Germany?” Without even pausing for half a minute, he replied spontaneously: “I want to go back to my village in Syria and become an engineer, so I can rebuild my home and my country.” That was his dream.

There are millions of similar stories that can inspire us. They are proof that our dreams can lead us away from despair, hopelessness, and suffering toward a future of hope and happiness.

I represent the sound of silence. I represent the faces of invisibility. I represent the cry of innocence. Sitting here safe and comfortable, we must listen to those bombs, those bullets, and those drones that are killing innocent children in Gaza. All Israeli children are our children. All Palestinian children are our children. All Sudanese children are our children; all the children of the world are our children. This feeling will arise when we hear their suffering and act to end it as if it were our own. Therefore, compassion is the answer.

Compassion is not kindness, mercy, pity, charity, or benevolence. These are great human qualities. But compassion is a force, not just a feeling. Compassion is the force that arises from feeling the suffering of others as our own, which drives us to act consciously to end that suffering.

Carrying on as if nothing has happened won’t work. I have been a member of numerous high-level groups, including the United Nations SDG Advocates, appointed by the UN Secretary-General. And I keep saying the same thing: carrying on as if nothing has happened won’t work because it isn’t working.

Dear friends, we must ignite and globalize compassion.

We must build compassionate leadership in our own contexts—among young people, in hospitals, in the judiciary, in law enforcement, in civil society organizations, in governments, in intergovernmental agencies, in academia, and in religious institutions.

We should feel as though my children are about to be killed and that I must save them immediately. In this sacred place, in the presence of His Eminence Cardinal Mauro Gambetti and His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, right here nearby. If we don’t start here, where will we start?

I am not a preacher, nor a politician, nor a professor. I am one of you. So I ask you to make compassion a global priority. If you don’t do it, who will? If we don’t do it now, when will we? And if we don’t start here, where will we start?