A Pen, a Meeting and a Memory from the Global March Against Child Labour — Paris, 1998

In 1998, during the Global March Against Child Labour, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Jacques Chirac, President of France, in Paris. I presented my thoughts and an appeal concerning child labour and the exploitation of children in the football industry, particularly in the context of the 1998 FIFA World Cup.

As a young activist from India participating in the Global March, I carried with me the voices and concerns of children whose childhoods were being taken away by exploitation. The meeting with President Chirac remains one of the memorable moments of that journey.

Among the objects I have preserved from that period is a Waterman rollerball pen, kept in its presentation case. The photographs show the Waterman branding, black-and-gold finish and the original case.

For me, however, the significance of this pen goes far beyond its value as a writing instrument. It is connected with a historic period of international mobilisation against child labour and with my own participation in the Global March Against Child Labour.

The pen has therefore become a small but powerful part of my personal archive. Alongside the photographs, documents and memories of the 1998 Global March, it connects a physical object with a larger struggle for children’s rights, education, dignity and freedom from exploitation.

A pen writes words; history preserves the meaning behind them.

Today, I look at this Waterman rollerball not simply as a valuable or beautiful pen, but as a reminder of a movement in which people across countries came together with one demand: children belong in schools and in safe, dignified childhoods—not in conditions of exploitation.

Paris, 1998 — Global March Against Child Labour.

The pen, photographs and related documents remain preserved as part of my personal archive of the Global March and the struggle against child labour.

Related:My Journey with the Global March Against Child Labour | by Lenin Raghuvanshi | Medium

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