Childhood's Chains
This Sunday was Universal Children's Day. It's the day that marks the anniversary of the UN's Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, and the adoption of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in 1989. It is meant to promote awareness and improvement of children's welfare. We have come a ways in the Western world from the pit of child labor, where the schoolhouse for too many children were the twelve hours they spent in factories over a hundred years ago. But there is so much more to be done.
In Spain, almost three million children find themselves at risk of poverty. Of those, almost a million are experiencing it. Only Romania has a worse situation. This is mostly as a result of the crisis Spain has gone through these past years, though there has always been poverty. Despite all the new jobs created, and the assurance from our government that our economy is recuperating, these children are at serious risk of remaining in poverty for the rest of their lives. The economy is not recuperating for them.
Cutbacks have meant families living on handouts from charities such as Caritas and local food banks, where they exist. For some children, the most nutritious meal they will eat is the school cafeteria lunch, if they have one. Some schools in large cities keep serving lunch for the neediest children during school vacations. Others, with less funds, can't. The Spanish government is one of the European governments that spends least on social protection of children. In 2013 it spent the same as in 2008, just 1.3% of its gross national product, despite the crisis and the increase in childhood poverty.
But Spain isn't the worst place to be a child in the area of the Mediterranean. At least fifteen children died Sunday in Aleppo, Syria. Seven died when their school was bombed. It is not normal to see a child not yet ten years old, sobbing in a hospital basement, covered with dust and blood, lamenting that she couldn't take it anymore. They'd killed everybody; hadn't they killed enough people already? It has been estimated that over 50,000 children have died in Syria since the beginning of its civil war. Yet the bombs keep falling on residential neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals. And no one wants those who can escape.
Over two hundred thousand minors escaped Syria and other hot zones in 2015, to wind up as refugees in Europe. Of those, close to 26,000 were unaccompanied. Most were probably teenagers, others children whose parents had died in the crossing or along the way. These are the most vulnerable, because 10,000 of these unaccompanied minors have disappeared. Some, the luckiest, have probably been taken in by other refugee families who simply claimed them. Others have probably disappeared into the maws of human traffickers, to reappear as slaves of one kind or another in different parts of the world.
The cruel Mediterranean has also done its part. This year, up to September, over 400 children drowned when the decaying boats they set out in for Europe, capsized. The only thing the E.U. has done to try to prevent deaths at sea was to sign an agreement with Turkey so that refugees not cross over to Greece, on the other side of the Aegean. To make ends meet in a country that has not offered work visas or much else, many families have to send their children to work in sweatshops, where they help make clothes for Western clothes companies. So, we've come full circle. While child labor may have been outlawed in the West, the West still benefits from the labor of children who have been denied a future in the West.
In Spain, almost three million children find themselves at risk of poverty. Of those, almost a million are experiencing it. Only Romania has a worse situation. This is mostly as a result of the crisis Spain has gone through these past years, though there has always been poverty. Despite all the new jobs created, and the assurance from our government that our economy is recuperating, these children are at serious risk of remaining in poverty for the rest of their lives. The economy is not recuperating for them.
Cutbacks have meant families living on handouts from charities such as Caritas and local food banks, where they exist. For some children, the most nutritious meal they will eat is the school cafeteria lunch, if they have one. Some schools in large cities keep serving lunch for the neediest children during school vacations. Others, with less funds, can't. The Spanish government is one of the European governments that spends least on social protection of children. In 2013 it spent the same as in 2008, just 1.3% of its gross national product, despite the crisis and the increase in childhood poverty.
But Spain isn't the worst place to be a child in the area of the Mediterranean. At least fifteen children died Sunday in Aleppo, Syria. Seven died when their school was bombed. It is not normal to see a child not yet ten years old, sobbing in a hospital basement, covered with dust and blood, lamenting that she couldn't take it anymore. They'd killed everybody; hadn't they killed enough people already? It has been estimated that over 50,000 children have died in Syria since the beginning of its civil war. Yet the bombs keep falling on residential neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals. And no one wants those who can escape.
Over two hundred thousand minors escaped Syria and other hot zones in 2015, to wind up as refugees in Europe. Of those, close to 26,000 were unaccompanied. Most were probably teenagers, others children whose parents had died in the crossing or along the way. These are the most vulnerable, because 10,000 of these unaccompanied minors have disappeared. Some, the luckiest, have probably been taken in by other refugee families who simply claimed them. Others have probably disappeared into the maws of human traffickers, to reappear as slaves of one kind or another in different parts of the world.
The cruel Mediterranean has also done its part. This year, up to September, over 400 children drowned when the decaying boats they set out in for Europe, capsized. The only thing the E.U. has done to try to prevent deaths at sea was to sign an agreement with Turkey so that refugees not cross over to Greece, on the other side of the Aegean. To make ends meet in a country that has not offered work visas or much else, many families have to send their children to work in sweatshops, where they help make clothes for Western clothes companies. So, we've come full circle. While child labor may have been outlawed in the West, the West still benefits from the labor of children who have been denied a future in the West.
Moving blog. Should be an oped in some major US newspaper.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Unfortunately, most major U.S. newspapers aren't interested in news like this.
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