Fieldnotes: Blogging on UNICEF's child survival work in the field
Entries from Fieldnotes tagged with 'children in conflict'
Protecting children in the DRC
Remaining pockets of violence, millions of Internally Displaced Peoples, massive human rights violations and a lack of basic social services severely hinder the efforts of Gill and other aid workers. “Humanitarian access is limited,” said Gill, “because there is virtually no infrastructure…a wooden bicycle used to transfer goods to market is about as advanced as it gets.” Gill and her colleagues also face a constant security risk and must take daily precautions against attacks—they are not even allowed to walk on the streets.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2008-1226/Kate Holt |
| Children play a game of ‘blind man’s bluff’ with a group leader in a UNICEF-assisted child-friendly space in a camp for the displaced. |
Against all odds, UNICEF has done amazing work for the children and people of the DRC, evident in both in the statistics and in the personal success stories that Gill shared. UNICEF has distributed 5.5 million anti-malaria bed nets, begun an initiative in maternal care/newborn survival, implemented a zero-child soldier advocacy campaign and opened 515 health centers. This year alone, we rescued and rehabilitated 2813 children from the armed services and militias, assisted 9,347 sex violation survivors, placed 35,354 children into child friendly spaces and distributed 155,544 packages with materials for mental and physical care and protection.
UNICEF is also using an innovative new system of faith-based and community initiatives to create peaceful and lasting changes. Representatives work with religious and village leaders to instill in the people basic sanitation practices, such as hand washing, and to reverse harmful traditions (many of which target girls and women) from within the community itself.
Gill spoke of her work as a challenge, but one that offers lots of rewards. “We are in the unique position of being a massive service provider and also an advocate for children,” she said, “And these children need all the help they can get.”
A girl struggles to survive conflict and cholera
Last December, as fighting increased in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and thousands of children continued to flee the ravages of war, Mungwiko landed at the Virunga Hospital in Goma—the capital of North Kivu Province. She was safe from such horrors as torture, rape and child conscription, but not from the conflict’s deadly diseases.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2008-1315/Olivier Asselin |
| Mungwiko sits on a bed at a cholera treatment centre at Virunga Hospital in Goma, capital of North Kivu Province, DRC. |
Mungwiko came to Virunga Hospital with cholera, a lethal disease usually contracted by drinking contaminated water. Mungwiko was the second of eight siblings to have contracted the illness. As she sat on her bed in the hospital’s cholera treatment center, she received oral rehydration solutions¬—provided by UNICEF¬—to combat her fierce dehydration.
Known as “the disease of the displaced,” cholera thrives on the dislocation of people and dearth of basic services that accompany long-term conflict, such as the DRC’s rebel war. During October and November, escalating hostilities in North Kivu forced some 100,000 people to leave their homes. The number of displaced people since the collapse of the Goma peace accords last August is now estimated at 250,000, mostly women and children. Some landed at one of the 60,000 camps in the Kibati area, north of Goma. Others—including thousands of children—fled across the borders to Uganda and Rwanda, where they faced recruitment or re-recruitment into armed militias.
A desperate limbo: Iraqi refugees in Syria
After spending a year in Iraq, I left in the spring of 2004 when the level of violence—kidnappings, car bombings, killings—ratcheted up so quickly and so brutally that I could no longer live there in safety.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2007-0738/Shehzad Noorani |
| Amna, 7, lights candles at her home in the Saide Zainab neighbourhood of Damascus, the Syrian capital. She, her parents and three siblings are Iraqi refugees displaced by conflict. They are struggling to survive in a one-bedroom apartment. |
Not surprisingly, millions of Iraqis also fled the terrifying daily violence that swept through the country. They made their way—in family cars stuffed with belongings—to neighboring Jordan and the Syrian Arab Republic which mostly accepted these refugees. But, having reached the safety of these countries, the vast majority of Iraqis found themselves badly stuck; paying high rents with little in the way of job prospects that might counteract the speedy drainage of their life savings.
The problem for many of these refugees is that, though they left Iraq with high hopes of immigrating to countries in the West, those countries turned out to be fairly lukewarm about having them. And so for every Iraqi allowed into, say, the U.S. or Canada or Italy, there are thousands (tens of thousands?) whose requests for visas are politely denied.
Always on the side of children
We're very relieved by the news of the Gaza cease-fire. As is the case with all violent conflicts, children have been suffering the consequences of thoroughly adult problems. UNICEF's mission to help children is vital in times like these. And we're not hampered by being on one side, or on another side—we are simply and always on the side of children.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2009-0016/Iyad El Baba |
| Gaza, 2009: On 12 January, a girl waits on a curb with empty water containers in the southern city of Rafah. Approximately 500,000 people have no access to running water. Water and sanitation services have partially collapsed due to considerable damage to the networks, difficulties faced to make repairs and lack of fuel for power. UNICEF is working with partners to distribute supplies, including family water kits. |
As I write, UNICEF is delivering six truckloads of emergency supplies and equipment to Gaza. With water and sanitation systems in the Gaza Strip badly damaged by fighting, UNICEF is worried about outbreaks of water-related diseases, such as diarrhea and cholera. So, working with our partners, UNICEF has already distributed more than 66,000 bottles of water, and emergency water and sanitation supplies for some 30,000 people.
Fighting also upended normal food supply lines, and many children are going hungry. UNICEF is rushing to distribute 7,500 cartons of high-energy biscuits—enough to feed 80,000 children for three months. We're also sending in much-needed health kits, obstetric surgical kits, midwifery kits, resuscitation kits, first aid kits and surgical instruments.
What kids in Afghanistan are going through
Not too long ago, I blogged about the worsening situation in Afghanistan, and the impact it's having on children there. Now the UN Secretary-General has released a report—compiled with help from UNICEF—which shows just how badly children in Afghanistan are suffering as a result of ongoing conflict in the country.
Afghan children are being recruited as suicide bombers, drawn into the military and used for sex by armed groups. They are also frequently caught up in suicide attacks or targeted directly with violence.
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| © UNICEF/AFGA000871/Asad Zaidi |
| A girl watches from the window of her tent classroom at Khawaja Rowash Middle School in Kabul, Afghanistan. |
UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde Frafjord Johnson, who visited Afghanistan recently, said, “After the fall of the Taliban, people were under the assumption that Afghanistan was venturing into the post-conflict phase and that some of the aspects that were hitting children hardest would go down. But I think there is a reality check that has kicked in amongst all players that this is not that case."
The power to save a child
What if you knew a child whose life was in danger?
And what if you knew you had the power to save that child?
Of course, you would do whatever you could.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ99-0884/LeMoyne |
| VIET NAM: A man lifts up his baby son as he stands on their houseboat on a canal in the Mekong Delta in the southern province of Dong Thap. |
Around the world, there are more than 25,000 children who are alive today but will not be tomorrow. They will die even though the medicines and technology that could save them readily exist. They will die from utterly preventable causes.
Today, on Universal Children’s Day, I think we should all pause to consider these 25,000 youngsters who will not live to see their fifth birthday. It is a day to mourn their tragic and cruel loss.
But it also a day to stand up and say enough—enough young lives needlessly extinguished, enough unnecessary suffering, enough squandered promise.
I invite you to join me in committing to a future in which the number of children who die from preventable causes is not 25,000 per day—it is zero.
Zero children killed by malaria, diarrhea and tetanus, zero children fatally sickened by unsafe water, zero children wasted by malnutrition. I believe in zero—zero preventable child deaths.
The healing power of the lens
Working in the Communications Department of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, I often get intimate glimpses of people’s lives all over the world. Part of my work entails researching photos of children and their families, many who live in developing countries and suffer from poverty, disease, disaster and other ills.
The images range from the horrible to the hopeful: a child succumbing quietly to fatal malnutrition, preschoolers in rapt attention as a teacher explains how to spot landmines, mothers in colorful wraps with rosy infants waiting for lifesaving vaccines.
Even among these powerful images, a few stand out as extraordinary. These are pictures not just of children, but by them.
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| © UNICEF/HQ06-1234/Zubair |
| PAKISTAN: Child’s View – Zubair, 8, photographs himself in the village of Haji Abad in Mansehra District in North Western Frontier Province. “I wanted to see my own image so I took this picture to see what I look like,” he said. “The three main needs in our community are shelter, food and water.” Zubair is one of 160 children who participated in the EYE SEE II project for earthquake-affected children. |
These photos are the product of UNICEF photography workshops, weeklong events that take place around the world and focus on local children. Collectively coordinated by UNICEF photographers, country offices, local NGOs, corporate sponsors, and, of course, children, the program empowers young people to document the world around them—to tell their own stories.
In Darfur, dreams can come true
When I was a kid, I watched the Olympics in a cozy pair of footy pajamas, curled up on the couch with my siblings and our dog. At some point, I'm pretty sure I ate ice cream.
When Lopez Lomong was a kid, he watched the Olympics by leaving the refugee camp he was living in and walking five miles to get a glimpse of track and field events on a black-and-white TV. He was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, orphaned by the fighting in Darfur. By the time he watched the Sydney Olympics of 2000 on that black-and-white TV, he had experienced more fear, violence and hardship than most people endure in a lifetime.
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| © UNICEF/ HQ04-0899/Shehzad Noorani |
| SUDAN: Hamudi Abdullah Mohammed witnessed the death of his parents during an early morning militia attack on his village in Darfur. This phopto was taken at the Kalma camp for displaced people, near Nyala, capital of South Darfur. |
Lopez Lomong spent 10 years in the Kenyan refugee camp and was eventually adopted by an American family. Now he's 23 years old and is, himself, an Olympic runner. Last week in Beijing, he carried the flag for the U.S. team during the Olympic opening ceremonies. He is also active in a group called Team Darfur—a coalition of approximately 400 international athletes who work to keep a spotlight on the continuing crisis in Darfur.
Clay Aiken calls for Kenya's kids to return to school
UNICEF Ambassador Clay Aiken recently visited the East African countries of Somalia and Kenya, where UNICEF provides children with health care, education, nutrition, clean water and sanitation. This is the last in a series of blog posts he has written about his experience in the field.
In early July, after visiting Somalia, I traveled to Eldoret, in Kenya’s Rift Valley, to visit camps for internally displaced people. This is where some of the worst violence took place following the Kenya elections in early 2008. Thousands of children were made homeless by the unrest.
Everywhere we went, there were the charcoaled remains of homes, schools and shops. We drove for hours and everywhere we went, we saw people trying to get their lives restored.
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| © US Fund for UNICEF / 2008 / Nick Ysenburg |
Although many schools were re-opened, far fewer children are turning up for class than before. And classes are taking place in schools that have been completely destroyed. I saw children sitting on rocks and bricks—which used to make up the foundations and roofs of their schools—using them now as desks and chairs.
Kidnapping of children is on the rise
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| © UNICEF/ HQ03-0012/Shehzad Noorani |
For a year, in 2003 and 2004, I lived in Iraq working as a journalist. Annette Apitz's recent post about children's lives in that country brought up a lot of memories for me. While I lived there, I saw some devastating things: families squatting dismally in an abandoned soccer stadium because their neighborhoods were no longer safe; hospitals full of wounded with almost no medicine to treat them; the aftermath of bombings that left cars, houses and humans in wrecked pieces.
But worst of all was seeing children purposely targeted for violence and—shockingly common—for kidnapping. UNICEF is very concerned about an increase in kidnappings of children in several countries including Iraq, Haiti and the Central African Republic, and is calling on governments to enact and enforce measures that provide a protective environment for children.
Protection for children in conflict situations
Today I'd like to address one last comment to my original post on child survival. Kathryn Hornbein wrote, "In your comments today, I saw nothing about the issue of conflict and child mortality/morbidity. Yet I think a majority of problems are caused or aggravated by war…."
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