Giving Children A Voice

Image taken from 'Out in the Cold' ©Save the Children

The Syrian conflict has now entered its 21^st month and is showing few signs of abating. Over the course of this period between 40,000 and 55,000 Syrians have been killed and about 1.2 million people are said to be displaced.

The violence has been universal, afflicting all parts of the country's population, but one of the most striking features of this civil war has been brutality enacted on children. Thousands of children have died in attacks and many more have been injured, traumatised and driven from their homes.

Save the Children has followed the conflict closely; having published a number of timely reports the charity, like UNICEF, has set up an appeal to protect Syria's children and provide them with food, shelter and emotional support.

Save the Children's most recent report 'Out in the Cold, Syria's Children Left Unprotected' documents the appalling winter conditions facing child refugees who have dispersed across the Middle East, attempting to find refuge in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. Sub-zero temperatures have already hit the region and “startling low levels of aid” (Out in the Cold, page 14)  mean that children will have to endure this winter without enough support. According to Justin Forsyth, the chief executive of the STR, world leaders must act quickly:

“[the] international community needs to match its diplomatic and security concerns with funding to help children. Unless there is a surge in funding, thousands of children are going to spend a bitter winter without proper shelter from the cold, and many will become sick as a result.”

One only has to look at Andrea Bruce's devastating photo essay published earlier this year by The New York Times to understand the truly horrendous effects that cold can have. Bruce's haunting, Caravaggio like pictures tell the story of Lailuma, an Afgan mother living with her family in a refugee camp outside Kabul who lost nine of her children over the course of the winter.

'Out in the Cold' follows a similar structure to Save the Children's previous report 'Untold Atrocities,The Stories of Syria's Children' in that the majority of its contents is made up of first person accounts of the deteriorating situation for refugees. Among the testimonies are stories of children huddling three to a blanket, sleeping in makeshift shelters made of billboards and falling sick as temperatures plunge in the region. One such story comes from 11 year old Ali, who has been living in an abandoned school in northern Lebanon for close to two years:

“I need clothes to wear... My parents dont have money, they dont have anything. Who should I ask for clothes from? I'm not happy at all. We would love to go back to Syria.”

A feature of these reports is that they break from what might be seen as a more traditional style of research based dissemination. Instead, they aim to allow the emotive force of the featured children's stories to emphasise the need for changes to be made. This is certainly not a new form of reporting; organisations from past and present have released similar reports and campaigns, however, it seems that these groups are increasingly using children's voices to deliver their message in a bid to inform policy making. Aside from STR, UNICEF has dedicated a section of their overall mission statement to the VOICE's of children, the UN followed up on its MACHEL Strategic Review by publishing a compilation of the views and recommendations of some 1,700 young people from 92 countries to raise awareness about the issues facing children in armed conflict and Defence for Children International has released a number of publications voicing the issues faced by Palestinian's in East Jerusalem.

It is arguable that in highly politicized humanitarian crises like the one in Syria or nearby Palestine, the simplicity of a child's story transcends the debate over who is in the wrong and forces us to remember that innocent humans are suffering. There will of course be those who criticize such reports, arguing that they only provide a limited perspective on complex situations. However, it seems that if a one sided report is going to be effective - using first person child accounts to drive an argument may be a less fallible method than others as children are unlikely to approach their testimonies with a strong political leaning. Save the Children's Syrian reports are undoubtedly subjective, they have an agenda, but the stories coming out of them are far from politicized, they do not point fingers, they only speak of the confusion and terror felt by children who cannot comprehend the violence going on around them. At a time when we are bombarded with information on a daily basis, 'Out in the Cold' and the reports that have preceded it offer a concise, easily accessible and striking message that forces us to view the Syrian conflict through the lens of those who most need rescuing from it. 

Robbie Lawrence

Wikichild Coordinator

@Wiki_child

@robbielawrence1

A Kony 2012 for Syria???

Although the Kony 2012 campaign was widely criticised for its inaccuracies, it did once again draw the world’s attention to the situation for children in Uganda, which despite the demise of the civil conflict was still ranked 97 of 141 countries for 2005-10 (decline of 3 places from 2000-04), by the Child Development Index in this year’s report.

In the context of the conflict in Syria, ignited with the Arab Spring movement in March 2011, it could be said that such a campaign is now needed for children there, whose plight has been noted but is yet to receive the worldwide attention that it warrants.

The United Nations has received reports of grave violations against children in the Syrian Arab Republic since the beginning of the conflict. Such reports are supported by those of other organisations including Human Rights Watch and War Child UK (see Wikichild Spotlight). According to the UN’s Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict these violations include killing, maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, and use as human shields.

The degree of this violence, and the targeting of children has shocked even those most experienced in these sorts of atrocities with the UN Special Representative Radhika Coomaraswamy stating recently,

“Killing and maiming of children in crossfire is something we come across in many conflicts but this torture of children, children as young as 10, is something quite extraordinary which we don’t really see in other places”.

With the persistence of the conflict, surviving families and children who escaped to refugee camps in neighbouring countries are, like those in Uganda, now faced with the aftermath of their experiences and new battles of coping with trauma and life in a refugee camp. In a camp in Jordan, humanitarian workers are reported to be doing their utmost to ‘establish a sense of normalcy for children,’ said Tamer Kirolos, the Jordan country director with Save the Children. UNICEF committed funds for a swing set, slide, a soccer field and tents that will be used for art and music programs, informal education as well as psychological counselling for children (the Star, 13.08.2012).

This week’s Wikichild spotlight feature from War Child UK, chronicles the impact of the conflict of the war on Syrian children and reports that the depth of the conflict is such that “legal instruments, and the international community who signed up to them, have proved completely unable to furnish any measure of security for children.” As the report states, children in countries in conflict should be able to depend on adults throughout the world to take steps to ensure their safety and fundamental rights as detailed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Unfortunately however, in Syria this is not the case and the report claims that both sides in the conflict have failed to provide protection to children in the areas that they control. For further information on this issue see the Wikichild Spotlight. 

Hannah Chadwick 
Wikichild Coordinator