Crocodile tears over children on ‘Children’s Day’ - EDITORIAL

Children’s Day is traditionally held on October 1. It is a date set apart in honour of children. The observance of the date varies from country to country. In 1925, ‘International Children’s Day’ was first proclaimed in Geneva during the World Conference on Child Welfare. 

The United Nations celebrates Universal Children’s Day on November 20. The date was established in 1954, in the aftermath of World War II. The war, in fact a battle between the imperial powers of Europe and Japan, was all about the carving out of colonies.  

The devastation following the war in Europe left thousands of European children hungry and destitute. UNICEF in its own document says ‘In the aftermath of World War II, the plight of Europe’s children was grave, and a new agency was created by the United Nations, to provide food, clothing and health care to these children.
Unfortunately the world body failed to recognize the fallout of the European wars of conquest on children in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America or on the indigenous people of the US, Australia and New Zealand. The newly set up body now known as UNICEF completely missed the suffering and misery World War II inflicted on the children in the colonies ‘owned’ by one or the other warring colonial powers - be they western or eastern.

During this period in most Southeast Asian countries, the GDP fell by half; 4.4 million civilians died prematurely; severe shortages of food and goods affected almost all Southeast Asians; and many lived in fear of draconian military rule. Imperial Japan used Korean girls to provide sexual gratification of its occupying forces in addition to using girls as industrial slaves in Japanese companies in producing war materials.

Just last week, a Korean court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries - a Japanese Multinational Company (MNC) - to make reparation to two survivors forced to provide slave labour to the company during World War II. The MNC rejects making payment.

In the Middle East, the UN set up the state of Israel in the middle of Palestine – in one stroke moving most European Jewish families out of Europe and creating a European settler outpost in the middle of the oil-rich region.
Because of the ongoing expansionist policies of the State of Israel, today more than 3.7 million Palestinian children and young people (under the age of 25) have been made refugees. Nearly 40% of them (2.5 million) are under 18. The median age is estimated at around 16, according to UNICEF. Unfortunately, though most colonies have ridded themselves of their colonial masters, millions of children continue to suffer deprivation.

According to the UN, our giant neighbour India continues to have one of the world’s highest child under-nutrition rates. With nearly 195 million under-nourished people, India shares a quarter of the global hunger burden. Nearly 47 million or 4 out of 10 children in India are not meeting their full human potential because of chronic under-nutrition or stunting.

Yet in the current financial year (2021-22), the Narendra Modi government has allocated a budget of Rs 478,196 crore (one crore = Rs.10 million) on defence expenditure; nearly 13.73% of the total government expenditure. 
In Afghanistan, between January 1 and June 30, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) documented 468 children being killed and 1,214 injured. Again on the day two, the US troops were killed while in the process of withdrawing from that country; a US drone fired hellfire missiles on a civillian target killing eight to nine children.   

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in a message to children of our country called on all children to celebrate the Children’s Day joyfully while at home, and wished them a prosperous future.
While the President’s good wishes are heartwarming, it will prove more than a bit difficult for more than 40% of the children in this country whose parents have lost their livelihood to the pandemic, to be joyful.
Over 70% of the children have no access to IT facilities and their education has come to a halt. They could well end up as a pool of cheap labour to the elite in society, if the government limits itself only to ‘good wishes’.