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Born but Already Dead… What is Life if Not the Death We are Granted to Be Alive?

DJISSOU YONKO Rose Maryella
Student and Blogger
12-01-2023
Opinion
5 min

The Impact of War on the Daily Lives of Children:

Through the north, the east, the west, and south of the world, war is everywhere. Every day, governments plan military operations in the name of reasons that are, in most cases, never really clear, deploying thousands of armed individuals with a single objective: to shoot the enemy. But who is this enemy? Is he between the ages of 0-18? Does he pose such a threat? I don't think so. No!

Children in war environments live in horror. War affects every aspect of their childhood, leaving permanent scars. In terms of education, the journey from home to school becomes an obstacle course, a journey where you're not sure you'll make it home in the evening because, at any moment, they could become statistics on the evening news. As a result, many parents, out of love for their offspring, prefer to sacrifice their dreams of becoming doctors, lawyers, and many others. Unfortunately, for some, this dream will never come true. These children are thus deprived of one of the most elementary things needed to evolve in this world: education, constituting a great handicap to their development.

Shut away at home, these children sink into this nightmare. Already deprived of education, famine comes back and becomes their lullaby every night. Going out to the grocery store at the corner of the quarter represents a decisive step towards death. Meat becomes gold, fish a treasure, and sweets a fantasy that they express between the silence of two explosive blasts. But are these children really alive? Aren't their souls already dead, long before the rapist, murderer, or kidnapper came to kill them? Perhaps they're doing them a favor… A life where every moment they break out in a cold sweat, every breath trying to temper the pounding of their little hearts. A life where every moment they are likely to become orphans...

Consideration and Gaze of Those Involved in Wars:

Children who wander and are left to their own devices, full of traumas that kill them mentally and physically: without family, without education, afraid, sometimes having been raped or tortured. Their crime: to be innocent... So what are our leaders doing? What measures are being taken by the commanders of these operations? Are these conflicts, which lead to the loss of thousands of lives, justified? And even if these justifications do have value, many measures to protect the innocent must be taken!

Fortunately, international organizations such as the UN and UNICEF are supporting these children and their families, giving them back their lost hope and putting a Band-Aid on their deepest wounds to try their best to show a way for them to get up and move on in this blurry future.

At the end of the day, these children are ours, and we have to protect them at all costs. I implore you, yes, you who are reading this, to take action for them every day through volunteering, petitions, and more. Because they need us, and we have to pray for them.

 

The article represents the views of the blogger and not those of LEED Initiative.