Kamala Sarup: Children Are Worried About Security

I would like to focus on a single, specific area: the economically lesser-developed areas of the world where low-intensity conflicts and natural disasters as well as conflicts involving drugs and human trafficking often take place. What marks these areas besides economic poverty? Usually there is widespread poverty, illiteracy and basic health problems.

Family structures torn apart, villages and tribal societies displaced and disbanded, and traditional agriculture abandoned. Refugees, displaced persons and bands of armed males are also often present.

Even there has been an enormous amount of global progress in the last thirty years in this direction. The rapid growth of many different types of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has neatly filled many of the gaps that governments and such global bodies as the United Nations have been unable or unwilling to fill.

In such severely-impacted areas of the world, reconstruction efforts are often hampered by the conditions which either arise after the event or which caused the situation to deteriorate in the first place.

Existing NGOs and well established UN relief agencies often encounter the following in attempting to get aid to those in need: Armed militias, thugs or criminal syndicates, An absence of any effective government security forces.

But in a situation where international aid and assistance can be administered to bridge or tide over a difficult and temporary situation beyond the control of local populations.

The world has seen a great number of disasters and problem areas in the last decade.

Can we work together where we can obtain justice for the children. Apparently, there were several quarries. Children are worried about the security. They never stop worrying.

According to the UN, an estimated 300,000 child soldiers under the age of 18 - are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide. A UN report published earlier this year named those who recruited children for fighting, which included the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and groups in Burundi, Sudan, the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. Some groups such as the rebels in Nepal, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, and the Janjaweed militia in Darfur Sudan, were also found to have killed, maimed and abducted children.

State of the World's Children, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 1996 stated that "Even if they have never seen a gun, millions of children suffer from wars, as resources that could have been invested in development are diverted into armaments. Indeed, one of the most distressing realities of our time is that most wars have been fought in precisely those countries that could least afford them."

Youth are at War

I remember seeing Jiwan at my uncle's machine shop and believe he might have had a high school education and maybe more because he was involved in some accounting or other business work when I saw him in an office. I heard yesterday he was killed in Iraq.

My Uncle is visiting Iraq at end of August and staying for perhaps 2 weeks. Too many wars and violence happening. The war will probably put us to think, but as a last resort fallback topic for our frequent anti war movement, I will say that we need to protect our children. For mass opinion, we need interchangeable peace actions.

How to make more peaceful programs than?

ENDS

© Scoop Media