In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground- a time… - Wangari Muta Maathai

There comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness . . . that time is now.

As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents. Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.

We must resist the notion that there is only one way to be a woman, one way to be African, and one way to be human.

Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect.