VOICES for PEACE
Sahel Rosa
Separated from his family at the age of four during the Iran-Iraq War, he arrived in Japan when he was seven.
Throughout his life in Japan, he faced numerous hardships, including poverty and bullying, yet overcame these severe challenges with resilience.
Later, while establishing himself as a successful actor, he also dedicated himself to humanitarian work—focusing especially on supporting children in impoverished regions, refugee camps, and residential care facilities around the world.
Hello everyone. I am very happy to be here today to talk to you all.
I am Sahel Rose and I come from Iran getting on a Persian carpet.
I was born in a country called Iran.
What do you think of hearing the word “Iran”?
I am sorry that there is no Iranian pavilion at this year's event, but Iran has a historyof
more than 7,000 years and is very pro-Japan, and has many things in common to Japan. However, in recent years, there have been many conflicts, disputes, and wars intheMiddle East and the world.
And it is also children who suffer from these wars.
I have been in Japan for 31 years. Unfortunately...there are still endless wars goingon.
I am also myself a person whose life has been changed many times by war. As far back as I can remember, I lost my “home” and my “family”. Orphaned by the war, I was sent to an orphanage like many other children. I had no food to fill my stomach, and had forgotten how to speak or laugh like a child.
But when I was seven years old, a woman came to the orphanage.
And I looked at her and said, "Mother".
Now I am 39 years old. The woman I called “mother” has been my mother for 32 years.
We are not related by blood, but she is my “family,” who loved me more than anyone elseand gave me a life, an education, and a goal.
From the day I met my nurturing mother, I experienced the word “hope”. Even if the world is dark, human kindness can be a light for everyone.
Then, my mother and I have lived together in Japan for 31 years. But at first we didn't
understand each others’ language. The culture was also different.
Going to a foreign country makes me anxious. What will happen to me in the future?What will I do in the future?
What I can do as a war orphan is
to protect the preciousness of life and the educational field for children who arebecoming lonely because of the war that is happening now.
It has been more than 15 years since I started such activities. I have been to many refugee camps and met many children. Let me tell you a story from last year.
In a refugee settlement in an African country called Uganda, I met many small hands and small voices. There were tens of thousands of children who had survived the conflict and genocideintheir home country and had been forced to flee their country. They told me about the night they had a scary dream, about being separated fromtheirbeloved father, about the stuffed animals they lost on the way to escape, and about theirhopes for the future.
The children drew pictures and wrote letters. Each one was like a cry fromthe heart. I thought deeply "I don't want anyone to erase this voice". I want to connect this “Dear” feeling to the world. That is why I created a picture book. It is called the "Dear". Here are the voices of children who are thought to have no voice. Today, the world is filled with so much sadness. Wars, poverty, natural disasters, children without a place to stay, but I believe inthem. As long as there is a heart in which we care about someone and want to do somethingfor them, the world will change.
What is peace?
I believe it must be the power to imagine. Imagine the pain of someone far away as if it were your own. Try to accept the tears you cannot see with your heart. Then, for the first time, “someone different from me”becomes "someone just like me".
The picture book “Dear,” which you are about to read, is filled with such feelings.
Please receive these pictures and words with your heart. And if you can, please share them with someone next to you. It is not a great power that can change the world. It is the connection of small hands passing kindness to each other. Let's begin.
Dear" Dear you.
For timid adults
I’m AG.
My dream is to become a teacher,
and I want to teach everyone here,
So I would work well and have my family happy.
If I don't study, I become a bad person.
If I don't study, I will have to be married soon,
because we are women.
So my priority wish is to be a good person.
I wanna live myself as a girl.
I never want to be married to the man, whom I don’t know,
who is older than my father.
I want to make my family happy.
If you were told you could only use magic once, what would you want?
I would not need magic,
so I wanna give other people the magic.
Even if countries do not get along with each other,
I believe we can be friends.
If we could make everyone smile a lot more than bullying each other,
wars would be frightened away.
The children aren’t timid,
but the adults are timid.
Peace smiles on you
”What would you want, if you could use magic?”
”I would bring my sister and brother back to life,
because they were killed by the bomb.”
”How do you think that we can achieve a world without wars?”
”Today's adults, I think, think of war as a game,
but I want all human beings, especially adults, to experience it and understand it.
I want the great adults of the country to walk the battlefield,
and to know the pain of the survivors.”
”If all of us take care of people deeply, it will be harmonious coexistence.
That way, people will win bad wars, right?”
“And then the war will lose
and instead everyone who died will come back to this world.”
“All people live with close their family and friends,
and then peace smiles on you.”
The girl who would be president
I was born in the earth.
Did we chose ‘here’ when we were born?
Abruptly ’here’ means the earth.
Ever since I was born on earth,
I have always thought of it as the needle planet of pain.
Because everywhere you go, there's the needle of pain in the sky.
You know, this planet is the earth and we are living in the earth.
Then why are we fighting each other in the same planet with the same earthlings?
Winning a war does not make the earth any bigger.
Why do great people forget pain?
They might be aliens dressed as earthlings.
So I decided to became a president.
I am studying in my dark room without light to dream come true.
‘Here’ is the earth, but ‘here’ is not the earth.
’Here’ is the planet of refugees.
’Here’ is the place on which the abandoned earthlings were dumped.
Before you know it, the earth is nicknamed the blood planet.
If I would become a president,
I would gather all the great people of the world in one place
and serve everyone my late grandma's bean soup.
And then we would talk with each other.
We have not talk with each other yet.
We talk, see, and feel each other,
Even if we don't understand,
we can share something with each other.
How do you think my idea?
Am I naive to think that？