Love All Children

Father saying goodbye to children departing Kyiv by train - photo credit Reuters

Images from Ukraine have inhabited my mind space between bedtime and sleep each night this week.   Video of explosions and fireballs from Russian-targeted buildings in Kyiv and Kharkiv are terrifying, but abstract enough that I can put them aside.  What I can’t shunt aside or dim enough to find peace and sleep are images of children.

Children in quilted jackets, squeezing mothers’ hands as they make their way down a rubble-strewn street toward an uncertain destination and future.  Wide-eyed children looking through a window pane, hugging stuffed animals.  A small child slumped against a mother’s breast as she pushes numbly through a chaotic street, framed by men in plain clothes brandishing assault weapons.  Mothers and children making a small nest in a subway station, sleeping three or four to a mattress listening in dread for the next explosion or arrival of the Russian convoy.

These kinds of images flood the news.  A scroll of brilliant photos rolls across the front page of the New York Times website each morning.  It is heartbreaking.  Always women and children caught in the crossfire of men’s cruel ambition and inhumanity. 

This time the man is Vladimir Putin, driven by megalomania, ice-cold sociopathy and a peculiar brew of paranoia and ambition that has him see himself as the victim of a world that he brutally victimizes.

The response of the more-or-less free world has been gratifying.  Even the Swiss, who seldom drift from neutrality, have joined in world-wide condemnation and severe sanctions.  If these international sanctions are to have an impact, we must be grateful for the sidelining of our own ice-cold sociopath who wished to send NATO to the dustbin of history and who still, after this unprovoked invasion, believes Putin is a “genius” and applauded the concoction of nonsense Putin offered as justification.

Without dismissing the overwhelming outrage expressed by most of the world, I am acutely aware of the cultural hegemony implicit in the headlines and in my own restless heartbreak.

We are particularly empathic and outraged because these people are like us.  They are almost all white; in fact, not surprisingly, there have been reports of refugees of color being harassed and delayed in crossing the border into Poland.  Images of children in parkas, snow boots and colorful wool hats could be out of an LL Bean catalogue.  Most Ukrainians interviewed by the media speak better English than some of us.  It is not odd to have greater sympathy with those with whom we have greater empathy.  It is impossible to look at this tragedy and not think, “Those could be my grandchildren.”

But are the children and grandchildren who seem like us deserving of an outpouring of empathy and resources that is not afforded to the “other?”

According to UNICEF, at the end of 2020 there were 33 million children forcibly displaced from their homes and, often, their families.  About 12 million are refugee children, another 20 million displaced within their own country by violence, and more than a million displaced by natural disaster.  

The vast majority are the “other;” Black and brown children from around the world.   The 10 leading counties of origin for these children are:  Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Eritrea and Burundi.  How many Americans could identify these countries on a map?  

Criminal organizations exploit refugee children for sex and labor.  1..2 million children are trafficked each year, the majority fleeing from Africa and the Middle East.  According to The Guardian, between 2018 and 2020, ”At least 18,000 unaccompanied child migrants have disappeared after arriving in European countries including Greece, Italy and Germany.”

Have we expressed similar empathy or outrage over the brown children we separated from their parents at the Mexican border?  Or the thousands of children we killed in the Iraq war, which was no more justified than Putin’s attack on Ukraine?  Or the millions of adults and children killed by our incessant carpet bombing of Vietnam or the millions more suffering the multi-generational effects of Agent Orange?

Are you aware that the United States is the only nation in the world that has not ratified the United Nations 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child?

I don’t write of these things to criticize the broad concern for and support of Ukrainian families.   The remarkable reporting and images from Ukraine are stirring the conscience of the world.  The courage of the Ukrainian people is nearly unimaginable to those of us who live in predictable comfort and security.

But I do hope that the surge of empathy for these children - who are so like our children - can open our eyes to see all the world’s children.  There are many organizations working to save children, the invisible ones too.  They need our support. Here are a few:

https://www.unicef.org/child-protection

https://www.savethechildren.org/us/what-we-do/protection/global-protection-programs

https://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home

From Valley News column 3/6/2022