Suffer the Children
What legacy can we expect for the children born into war and poverty around the world?
No-one can deny that the world today can be seen to be a much more violent place than at any time in recent memory. It is an ever-increasing cycle seemingly without end. We see this constantly in the media, violence that is so extreme in its nature we become accepting and desensitised to it.
Due to this, the world, sadly, is not a happy place for far too many vulnerable children. Even in the UK, currently NSPCC statistics tell us 92,000 children are in care, more than half due to abuse or neglect, this figure has been rising steadily in recent years and is set to rise still more.
In war zones and areas of great poverty and lawlessness this effect is greatly multiplied. If the above is the case in a closely controlled, protective society, we cannot imagine the scale of the issue in places like the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, China and Africa. In UK we have clear processes to deal with violence towards children, in other countries, they do not.
Children in areas of extreme poverty are highly vulnerable to attack – from cultural mutilation practices, child marriage, sometimes subjected to horrific violence from their own parents or carers, either as a form of misguided discipline or just as an outlet for unhappiness and depression. Most of these children will bear the scars, inside and out for life, and it will cast a shadow over their future lives.
The United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) believe education and promotion of gender equality is one of the answers – in Africa where female genital mutilation and botched circumcisions are ruining children’s futures, in Chinawhere girl children are not wanted and often abused, even killed in public as people pass by, and many other countries.
One of the worst and most difficult-to-solve issues involve children in war-torn areas who have lost parents and are then vulnerable to attacks of violence and sexual assault.
In war-torn Syria, Iraq and the other beleaguered countries of the Middle East, the resulting poverty and deprivation have made child marriage more widespread, though there are schemes to help. UNFPA report that 11% of refugee children were married before the age of 15, some as young as 10, usually to older men. These are misguided attempts by desperate people trying to provide stability for their children and reduce their own financial burdens in a time of extreme and unremitting need.
The UN describe international child protection as a growing crisis. Back in December 2014, Amnesty International reported that Yazidi women and children were being given to ISIS soldiers either as slaves, for torture or rape.
The wars in the Middle East have caused one of the worst displacements of population in human memory. In Syria alone there are 7.6 million internally displaced, 3.9 abroad. In these, the numbers of orphaned children are difficult to keep track of, and the opportunities for trafficking, child marriage and general/sexual abuse are difficult to prevent. Safe spaces projects are a start, but they are restricted to women and girls.
Boy children are just as vulnerable in the same and different ways. The horrors that many of these children have seen – crucifixions, mob violence, beheadings – often translates into their being recruited into violence. Often, joining either a government or rebel group is their only means of survival.Girls as well as boys are also recruited. It has been reported that ISIS have specifically recruited children in free schooling projects that include weapons training and sending them on suicide bomb missions. The legacy of violence and hatred these children are submitted to guarantees a generation of violence and terrorism in years to come.
The United Nations has Child Protection Advisors working in various countries. However the scale of violence particularly in the Middle Eastern war zones, and following the murder of aid workers, has rendered the area a no-go zone. Currently, CPAs are working in Afghanistan alone.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child established in 1989 was a hopeful agreement that was intended to lead to UN member nations working together to safeguard children throughout the world. It can be seen to have failed, though the situation in the world today is worse than could even have been imagined at that time. We can at least take some comfort from the fact people working for the UN and other organisations are trying to do something. Whether it is enough, whether it will ever be enough, whether broken lives can ever be rebuilt and the legacy of violence halted, who can say?
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