Feature: Let's wake to somber sufferings of children
Feature: Let's wake to somber sufferings of children
11:31, November 06, 2009 
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If the official UNICEF 2009 report on child protection is not authoritative enough, then a candid thumbnail sketch of children subject to the most extreme forms of exploitation and violence known to mankind should add enough authenticity to ring the bell, alarm bell that is, to wake adults up to the somber sufferings of their innocent juniors.
A GIRL ALREADY IN A FAMILY WAY?
Suni was reluctant to look back at her life. She was married at the age of 13 and widowed at 18 after having given birth to three children.
Lalita Saini dares not to look ahead at her life. The 14-year-old has been married for three years and now is soon expecting her own child.
Child marriages and early teen pregnancies still haunt India even though the country in 1927 initiated a ban on marriage for girls under 12 and raised the legal age for females to marry from 15 to 18 in 1978.
According to the UNICEF report, 47 percent of India's women aged 20-24 were married before the legal age of 18.
Another independent study, conducted by Anita Raj, an associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, had similar results.
Raj's report found that 22.6 percent of women in India were married before the age of 16 and 2.6 percent were married before 13, with 48.4 percent of women married as children having given birth before 18.
An Indian government survey found that almost 30 per cent of boys were married before they reach the legal marriage age of 21.
Even a 100,000-rupee (almost a year's per-capita income) fine established by the Indian government in 2006 did not succeed in reversing the trend.
Each year around the Akshaya Tritiya (or Akha Teej) festival, girls in their early teens are still married off in some states of India.
"I didn't want to get married back then, but I had no choice," Suni said. That is Suni's regret but she deems herself lucky in that she has survived teen pregnancy and early child bearing whereas quite a few others have not.
Child marriage is also a social issue in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Central African Republic, Guinea, Mali, Chad and Niger.
The UNICEF report points to the fact that one third of the women aged 20-24 in developing countries are married off before 18 and the number of girls involved in child marriage is as many as 64 million.
A BOY PREFERS A RIFLE TO A CANDY BAR?
The shock of witnessing his father shot and killed and decapitated by militants was so much that 6-year-old Al-Khalil Muhee could not stop playing his own imagined war game with a make-believe rifle outside his home in Iraq, always murmuring "I will kill you all. I will decapitate you all."
Though eight years older, Nada Joma'a found it nothing if not hard to understand the scene in Gaza Strip either.
An Israeli missile killed her mother, destroyed their house, and wounded Nada and her siblings.
"I can't forget when I saw my mother was dead, my sister, brother and myself wounded in that missile blast in our house," said Nada, who later lost a leg to a life-saving amputation in hospital.
Official Palestinian figures said that more than 350 children were killed during the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in January, 1,872 other children, of whom 500 were physically disabled, were wounded.
Those children still are counted as conflict and war fatalities while others get killed or maimed and raped and orphaned without even having their fates noticed.
Even the international institutions and humanitarian agencies find it difficult, if not impossible, to come up with close-to-fact figures of child fatalities in wars, conflicts and attacks raging in one part of the world or another.
CHILD'S WORST CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARE?
Childhood is often a piece of memory warmly tucked in the bottom of the heart and is therefore a place to look back at as the years go by.
But to Kjell-Ake Bjurkvist, childhood is nothing but a nightmare that he has been trying to shake off.
He became a public figure in Sweden not because of child stardom in a movie or on television but because of the fact that he was the first in his country to admit being sexually abused as a child and to report the perpetrator -- his stepfather -- to police.
Now a father of two children himself, the Swede works as an adviser and councilor of child abuse.
"I want to try my personal best to help those abused kids and my terminal dream is to materialize the goals as set out by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child," Bjurkvist said.
Child abuse, child sexual abuse in particular, is a social scourge that many shun or slight.
The fact that there is never a conclusive tally of child abuse victims points to the covertness of this hideous crime, which U.S. talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey has described as depriving victimized children of their sense of being in both their childhood and adulthood.
The Swede is not alone in fighting that social scourge. More and more people awakened to the crime by various national and international regulations and conventions have been joining hands with Bjurkvist in the battle.
To honor their deeds, the World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child (WCPRC) started in 2000 to honor those who make efforts to protect children.
A total of 21 million students at 47,000 schools in 94 countries voted for the 2008 recipient of the prize _ 1 million Swedish kronor which is used in the recipient's work for the rights of children.
The United Nations in 2002 included protection of children against abuse into its action plan hailed as "A World Fit for Children." The plan also prioritizes the promotion of healthy lives, the provision of education and the fighting against HIV/AIDS.
CHILDREN EARNING A HARD LIVING TO HELP SUPPORT FAMILY?
Thirteen-year-old Koffi Eric is lucky.
The Cote d'Ivoire boy has to attribute his luck of leaving the circle of child labor early on to a bone fracture sustained while working as a laborer carrying a sack of seeds in a palm plantation.
The UNICEF 2009 Report on Child Protection estimated that worldwide 218 million children aged 5 to 17 are laborers and 126 million of them are working in hazardous conditions.
Child labor exploitation is widespread. Incomplete statistics showed that there are 1 million child laborers in Kenya; there are 3.6 million child laborers in Mexico; and in Honduras child laborers account for 14 percent of the child population of that country.
The International Labor Organization created, in 2002, the annual observance of a World Day Against Child Labor on June 12 to draw additional attention to the issue.
WHAT CHILDREN WORLDWIDE LOOKING UP TO?
By now, half a century has passed since the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Declaration of the Rights of the Child to initiate actions aimed at benefiting and promoting the welfare of children.
Twenty years have passed, too, since the same assembly got a Convention on the Rights of the Child signed to clearly establish the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of children.
Now, 193 United Nations member states have ratified that convention, making it one of, if not the most endorsed conventions in the world.
Actions are to follow up on the ratifications to change, improve and secure the treatment and welfare of children in the world.
Source:Xinhua
A GIRL ALREADY IN A FAMILY WAY?
Suni was reluctant to look back at her life. She was married at the age of 13 and widowed at 18 after having given birth to three children.
Lalita Saini dares not to look ahead at her life. The 14-year-old has been married for three years and now is soon expecting her own child.
Child marriages and early teen pregnancies still haunt India even though the country in 1927 initiated a ban on marriage for girls under 12 and raised the legal age for females to marry from 15 to 18 in 1978.
According to the UNICEF report, 47 percent of India's women aged 20-24 were married before the legal age of 18.
Another independent study, conducted by Anita Raj, an associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, had similar results.
Raj's report found that 22.6 percent of women in India were married before the age of 16 and 2.6 percent were married before 13, with 48.4 percent of women married as children having given birth before 18.
An Indian government survey found that almost 30 per cent of boys were married before they reach the legal marriage age of 21.
Even a 100,000-rupee (almost a year's per-capita income) fine established by the Indian government in 2006 did not succeed in reversing the trend.
Each year around the Akshaya Tritiya (or Akha Teej) festival, girls in their early teens are still married off in some states of India.
"I didn't want to get married back then, but I had no choice," Suni said. That is Suni's regret but she deems herself lucky in that she has survived teen pregnancy and early child bearing whereas quite a few others have not.
Child marriage is also a social issue in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Central African Republic, Guinea, Mali, Chad and Niger.
The UNICEF report points to the fact that one third of the women aged 20-24 in developing countries are married off before 18 and the number of girls involved in child marriage is as many as 64 million.
A BOY PREFERS A RIFLE TO A CANDY BAR?
The shock of witnessing his father shot and killed and decapitated by militants was so much that 6-year-old Al-Khalil Muhee could not stop playing his own imagined war game with a make-believe rifle outside his home in Iraq, always murmuring "I will kill you all. I will decapitate you all."
Though eight years older, Nada Joma'a found it nothing if not hard to understand the scene in Gaza Strip either.
An Israeli missile killed her mother, destroyed their house, and wounded Nada and her siblings.
"I can't forget when I saw my mother was dead, my sister, brother and myself wounded in that missile blast in our house," said Nada, who later lost a leg to a life-saving amputation in hospital.
Official Palestinian figures said that more than 350 children were killed during the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip in January, 1,872 other children, of whom 500 were physically disabled, were wounded.
Those children still are counted as conflict and war fatalities while others get killed or maimed and raped and orphaned without even having their fates noticed.
Even the international institutions and humanitarian agencies find it difficult, if not impossible, to come up with close-to-fact figures of child fatalities in wars, conflicts and attacks raging in one part of the world or another.
CHILD'S WORST CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARE?
Childhood is often a piece of memory warmly tucked in the bottom of the heart and is therefore a place to look back at as the years go by.
But to Kjell-Ake Bjurkvist, childhood is nothing but a nightmare that he has been trying to shake off.
He became a public figure in Sweden not because of child stardom in a movie or on television but because of the fact that he was the first in his country to admit being sexually abused as a child and to report the perpetrator -- his stepfather -- to police.
Now a father of two children himself, the Swede works as an adviser and councilor of child abuse.
"I want to try my personal best to help those abused kids and my terminal dream is to materialize the goals as set out by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child," Bjurkvist said.
Child abuse, child sexual abuse in particular, is a social scourge that many shun or slight.
The fact that there is never a conclusive tally of child abuse victims points to the covertness of this hideous crime, which U.S. talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey has described as depriving victimized children of their sense of being in both their childhood and adulthood.
The Swede is not alone in fighting that social scourge. More and more people awakened to the crime by various national and international regulations and conventions have been joining hands with Bjurkvist in the battle.
To honor their deeds, the World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child (WCPRC) started in 2000 to honor those who make efforts to protect children.
A total of 21 million students at 47,000 schools in 94 countries voted for the 2008 recipient of the prize _ 1 million Swedish kronor which is used in the recipient's work for the rights of children.
The United Nations in 2002 included protection of children against abuse into its action plan hailed as "A World Fit for Children." The plan also prioritizes the promotion of healthy lives, the provision of education and the fighting against HIV/AIDS.
CHILDREN EARNING A HARD LIVING TO HELP SUPPORT FAMILY?
Thirteen-year-old Koffi Eric is lucky.
The Cote d'Ivoire boy has to attribute his luck of leaving the circle of child labor early on to a bone fracture sustained while working as a laborer carrying a sack of seeds in a palm plantation.
The UNICEF 2009 Report on Child Protection estimated that worldwide 218 million children aged 5 to 17 are laborers and 126 million of them are working in hazardous conditions.
Child labor exploitation is widespread. Incomplete statistics showed that there are 1 million child laborers in Kenya; there are 3.6 million child laborers in Mexico; and in Honduras child laborers account for 14 percent of the child population of that country.
The International Labor Organization created, in 2002, the annual observance of a World Day Against Child Labor on June 12 to draw additional attention to the issue.
WHAT CHILDREN WORLDWIDE LOOKING UP TO?
By now, half a century has passed since the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Declaration of the Rights of the Child to initiate actions aimed at benefiting and promoting the welfare of children.
Twenty years have passed, too, since the same assembly got a Convention on the Rights of the Child signed to clearly establish the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of children.
Now, 193 United Nations member states have ratified that convention, making it one of, if not the most endorsed conventions in the world.
Actions are to follow up on the ratifications to change, improve and secure the treatment and welfare of children in the world.
Source:Xinhua
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