By Marcia L. Mason

All the Starving Children
Their eyes are everywhere,
The children
for whom I ate
green peas
when I was young.
Their eyes are everywhere,
staring at me
from dark hollow pools
of despair.

In Mexico,
They sprawl on the pavement,
claiming scraps of newspaper
for home.
Bony fingers stretch out
Like splayed chicken feet.
It's one o'clock in the morning,
But they are wide-eyed,
And their eyes are everywhere.

In Bangladesh,
They buzz around my car,
Like flies on mucous-filled noses
and dry lips.
Their hands
have that same withered
habituated crook,
Inverted, paralyzed,
And their eyes are everywhere.

In Somalia,
They drag themselves,
Collapsing in the dust
like tumbleweed blown in
by non-existent breezes.
Their eyelids droop down
to conceal glazed pupils,
And still,
Their eyes are everywhere.

Their eyes are everywhere....
Forcing me
to avert mine.

Elayne Clift
(From Toward Freedom, November 1992)

A Cry from Afghanistan

You do not know how happy we were when we heard that you had started making efforts to restore peace and security in Afghanistan. Thinking that we might once again be able to play with our friends in the streets without the fear of being hit by rockets, we were happy. We are anxious to be able to go to school and study. We do not want to spend our days and nights in moist basements. But what else can we do? Fear from the rockets drives us into our basements. Our parents talk of losing a family member every day.
What makes you elders kill each other?
Our parents have had no jobs for a long time and we have nothing to eat. We hate it when people are being killed. If we, the children, can be friends, why can't you, the elders, become friends?
Why, when our fathers leave our houses, are they taken hostage? Why do strangers then come to us and demand tremendous amounts of money for their release? They well know that we are hungry and do not have any money. Our fathers have not harmed anybody. They always pray for peace to be restored to our country.
Oh, Lord Ñ What sin have we committed that we are being so punished?
Oh, Lord Ñ You know how much we are afraid of tanks and rifles! Why then are there so many tanks and guns and rifles on the roads and streets and lanes and schools and parks?
How ugly our city looks! All of it has been destroyed. We have heard that in the other countries children go to parks with their parents for recreation. Green trees and colorful flowers are all very beautiful. But in our country, there are neither trees nor flowers.

-- Read by a child from the Islamic Cooperation Union's Student Children of Afghanistan (Taken from Newsheet Shirkat Gah: Women Living under Muslim Laws, Vol. VI, No. 4, 1994)

Patriarchy Lashes Out

Patriarchy, in its death throes, is lashing out in every direction. In its desperation, patriarchy has graduated from warfare to genocide, senselessly slaughtering babies, children, women, and whole villages. For those who escape as refugees Ñ mostly women and children Ñ there is death from starvation and disease.
Patriarchy's wholesale terrorism against noncombatants employs rape, mutilation, torture, and death to keep survivors in a constant state of fear, hopelessness, and powerlessness. If patriarchy's rampage of terrorism continues unchecked, what will our world look like? What effect will internalized violence have on our future world citizens and world leaders?
In the past decade two million children have been killed in armed conflict. Three times that number have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. Millions of others have been forced to witness or even take part in horrifying acts of violence. It is clear that, increasingly, children are targets, not incidental casualties, of armed conflict.
It has been estimated that since 1972, about 4.5 million Filipino children have experienced displacement, arrest, harassment, wounding, sexual molestation, and other human rights violations.
UNICEF reports that approximately 4500 Iraqi children die every month of hunger and disease; others suffer from stunted growth. Over 750,000 Iraqi children have died since 1990 when the United Nations sanctions were implemented.
This is a genocide of Iraqi children.
Children are raped by soldiers; mothers witness their children blown to pieces by landmines in their fields; children are forced to watch while their families are slaughtered; 15-year-old ex-soldiers bitterly mourn their lost childhood.
In some countries, conflicts have raged for so long that children have grown into adults without ever knowing peace. They are prevented from going to school or even going outside to play. Their parents may be injured or killed before their eyes, and they themselves become objects of the violence. Surviving children are traumatized for life. Many suffer emotional disorders manifested by shock, trembling and incessant crying. In serious cases, children become suicidal and exhibit extreme forms of aggression.
These psycho-social effects of war make normal childhood development impossible and are the seeds of a troubled, violent adulthood.
In Bosnia and Rwanda, rape wasn't just a by-product of ethnic cleansing. It was a devastating weapon. The U.N. tribunal in the Hague has ruled rape a war crime. Even so, no one expects many perpetrators to be brought to justice. Why? Because there is no world law, no world court for justice and no world police force to enforce world law, in short, no full-blown world government protectng human rights..
And what about the children of those rapes Ñ rejected and despised merely for how they were conceived? What will happen to their lives?
A recent Save the Children report estimated that a quarter-million soldiers younger than 18 Ñ some as young as five Ñ are serving in 33 armed conflicts. The use of girls as suicide bombers was cited in Sri Lanka and Lebanon. Girl soldiers were stationed at the front in Cambodia in all military actions and so bore the brunt of casualties. Sexual abuse of girls and boys was widely reported.
One million children work as prostitutes in eight Asian countries. In Pakistan, 8 million children, or one third of those between ages five and fifteen, are in the workplace. The United Nations Population Fund reports that girls account for 70 percent of the 130 million children worldwide who are not in school. Thousands of girls across the world are being torn from their homes and forced into early marriages, some before they have even reached their tenth birthday. Apart from the psychological trauma, young mothers are five to seven times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth. Their bodies are not fully developed and complicated pregnancies can leave them sterile, paraplegic or suffering from a variety of health problems.

Children's Rights Are Human Rights

Efforts have been made to protect children's rights. In 1924, the League of Nations adopted the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child protecting children against slavery, child labor, and the traffic and prostitution of minors. In 1979, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the international community. However, as we hear and read on a daily basis, this "Bill of Rights" for children is continually violated Ñ and will continue to be violated because there is no World Court of Human Rights "to provide a forum and enforceable redress for individuals." (See David Gallup's column on page 7 in this issue.)
As Gallup further notes, "A global judicial system, such as the World Court of Human Rights, in conjunction with a global legislature and executive, could outlaw, prevent and ultimately eliminate war."
Indeed, war must be outlawed Ñ including war against women and children. World citizens must speak out and stand up for World Government, which is fundamental to this end.

Marcia L. Mason is a Quaker, peace activist, world citizen, and World Syntegrity Project alumna who lives in Burlington, Vermont.

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