THINKING FOR OURSELVES

For the Children

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Jan. 13-19, 2008

Those of us who live in cities like Detroit know something about the erosion of our souls when confronted with violence. On a daily basis we see the shattering of children who see too much, endure too much, lose too much of the safety and security that they have every right to expect from the adult world.

It is because of the children, both here and in Iraq, that we must end this war and repudiate the ways of thinking that got us into it.

Even for a media weary of reporting violence and wary of serious critiques of the Bush surge, the failure to confront the latest reports on the state of Iraq’s children is astonishing. In the midst of the death of Benazir Bhutto and the build-up to the Iowa primary, the media seemed incapable of helping us focus on the catastrophe of Iraq’s children.

Two weeks ago the anti-corruption board in Iraq revealed that 5 million children are now orphaned there. This staggering number of lives fractured by violence was reported after official governmental statistics were gathered and presented at a conference in Baghdad. Moussa Faraj, the anti-corruption board chief, said “The government should set up an institutional or legislative program to help the Iraqi orphans. Iraq is an oil rich country and it is not acceptable that its orphans remain groaning in tragedy.”

The sheer magnitude of the numbers of lives devastated by this tragedy makes it difficult to grasp. It becomes even more difficult to face when we contrast it with the miniscule response to this crisis by the government. Out of the millions of orphans, only 470 children are supported by the government according to Nadira Habib, a member of the Committee on Family and Childhood Affairs in the Iraqi parliament.

Along with this staggering report came estimates of increasing displacement by internal and external migration. In response to the daily violence 25,000 children are forced to leave their homes and move to other parts of the country every month in search of safety. By the end of this year approximately 75,000 children were living in camps or temporary shelters.

For many of these children life is fragile. UNICEF reported that 25 percent of Iraqi children between the ages of six months and five years suffer from acute or chronic malnutrition. One out of three children is malnourished or underweight. It is estimated that 122,000 children died in 2005 before reaching their 5th birthday. The infant mortality rate in Iraq is 125 per 1000 live births, as contrasted to 7 per 1000 in the U.S.

A recent report by Oxfam International says 70% of Iraqis lack access to safe drinking water and 43% live on less than a dollar a day. It estimates that 8 million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance. "Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, health care, education, and employment." "Of the four million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 percent currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 percent in 2004." Nearly 10 million people depend on this rationing system. In December the Iraqi government announced it would cut the number of items in the food ration from ten to five due to "insufficient funds and spiraling inflation."

This war , this devastation, is a catastrophe of our making. We, the people, have a responsibility to create a government that protects all of our children, both here and in Iraq. The measure of the worth of any policy or person should be how well we meet this sacred obligation.

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