Stolen Childhood

Drought has once again hit Ethiopia triggering another humanitarian crisis in the country. Ethiopia first caught the attention of the international community 24 years back when famine and inhuman policies by the Ethiopian government killed over a million Ethiopians in 1984. Drought and hunger has remained a chronic problem in the country with famine striking the major coffee producing country at regular intervals. This year’s poor rains have once again brought a massive food crisis that had become further aggravated by the rising global food prices.

China seems to be getting blow after blow in recent times. Recently it was criticized for bad handling of the Tibet riots by the international community and now, the illegal usage of child labor by its Southwestern factories is fast building up as a reason for attracting international attention in the wrong way. Surely, it seems as though the prospective Olympic hosts are having a hard time trying to stay in the good books of the international community.

None heeds my pet peeve. Even though I have the likes of Jonathan Swift endorsing me. I have maintained that there are too many kids on this earth. Look wherever you will, there are just too many children swamping the place. They just will not leave us in peace. We have tried every imaginable torture on them but yet they won’t finish themselves off. We routinely abuse them, rape and sodomise them, make them work in sweatshops for hours, betray and beat them. Yet they refuse to die. Like Swift, I am a firm believer in cooking and eating them all up. That will sort out the hunger-issues faced by the poor and at least bring some calm to the world. Are we not tired of the incessant noise that kids make? IAfrica.com reports a clichéd issue is the blandest manner possible. Children in Mogadishu in Somalia are having a hard time — they are living off the streets, are being beating mercilessly; in short: they are being exploited. Well, there are two aspects to the issue. The street-kids in Mogadishu are not having it any worse than the street-kids in say, Cambodia or even in India. This, notwithstanding Somalia’s being in civil war for sometime. Human nature is the same everywhere and at all times. Children are the most vulnerable in our society. Thus it is natural that they be exploited; they cannot protest. The other crucial point we have to bear in mind when we read any report of child-abuse: since adults by their own admissions know everything better than children, why should anyone complain about kids being tortured? The adults involved in the torture always know better and if they choose to be cruel, should anyone cry foul at all?

The children in Kenya are suffering. They are being abused by both the government and the militia of the Sabaot Land Defense Force. And these children are totally innocent. It is their bad luck that they have been caught up in the war between the militia and the army. The militia of Sabaot is fighting for a good cause. Poor farmers who had been tilling the land in the area for a long time were denied the land after the government came up with a land scheme. The land they lost was grabbed by the rich and powerful big farmers.

As the number of reported cases of children soldiers in countries wrought by armed conflict increases, the U.N. Council recently warned of setting stricter measures against military organizations that encourage such activities. But the announcement was quite strange since the U.N. has no firm pledge on what possible sanctions may be imposed to the violators.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon should somehow lay down the cards on how to protect children getting recruited in nations experiencing armed conflict or the practice will continue killing ill-prepared young children and wasting their lives in the war. In a recent report, Ban cited 58 groups in 13 countries participating in armed conflict. Most of them are in Asia and Africa, whose soldiers are children and are allowed to join in live encounter. Such government armies included Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Somalia and Sudan, including rebel groups.

A new chapter has been opened by Al Qaeda in Iraq; which is to use children to further its aims. The US military released video footage of a tape it claims it stumbled across during a raid last December. The tape showed children as young as 10, wearing trademark masks receiving training. Though there is no certainty of the authenticity of the tape, one tends to believe in the US military. Some cynics might argue that all this is the handiwork of the dirty-tricks department of the CIA, but one would not go so far as to agree with it.

The use of children by Al Qaeda is disturbing news. It is doing so for the same reason as they are using women suicide bombers. To increase troubles for Iraqi and US security forces, as women and children are largely ignored during security checks.

Africa’s children are getting a raw deal. We had heard of children being kidnapped by the armed groups fighting in Congo and used for carrying ammunition or for sex. Now it has come to light that children from many African countries, especially Nigeria, are being sold by their parents to unscrupulous agents, who assure them that their kids will see a great future in foreign lands. Helpless African parents living in poverty are taken in by this con-talk. But these children are brought to Britain and abused. They are used to get welfare benefits. They are used in hotels and restaurants and are sexually abused.

Britain seems to have become a haven for these traders in children. Some of these agents are procuring children from Romania from similarly poor parents and then use them in organized gangs.

A recent report by COAV [Children and youth in Organized Armed Violence] project says there is no one solution to the problem of city children taking to guns and joining gangs. The study was conducted in a number of countries around the world.

Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC)is escalating and with it the plight of thousands of helpless children. We have heard of wars involving child soldiers, most notably the war involving bitter neighbors Iraq and Iran, where thousands of young children were drafted into the armies of both the countries to fight a senseless ideological war. But, nowhere has the use of child soldiers been as brutal and widespread as in the DCR.

According to reports from the international aid agency Save the Children, huge numbers of children are being recruited on a regular basis by the conflicting parties, particularly in the war-ravaged North Kivu province in eastern Congo.

As tensions continue in the war-torn country, a number of Iraqi children being victimized by countless bombings and abuses in Baghdad remain a major problem.

In a recent report of UNICEF, a UN children’s agency, the daily siege that Iraq is facing has put the lives of two million Iraqi children at risk.