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Lucinda Marshall: The Dead Children's Society |
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http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July05/Marshall0714.htm
Dissident Voice July 14, 2005
The
global pandemic of abusive behavior towards children is the human
species' ultimate form of self-sabotaging behavior. Execrable as they
are, out of sheer psychic necessity we avoid adding up the individual
bits and pieces and totaling the damages; quite simply, we can no
longer process all the horror that we are confronted with.
But
this isn't about one or two instances that we can pawn off as an
aberration, it's not just about Boy Scout leaders accused of child
pornography or clergy accused of sodomy. We are talking about human
rights abuses on a grand scale, abuses that add up to some sort of
hideous endgame where if we can't pollute, poison, nuke or bomb
ourselves to death, then we go to Plan B and make damned sure that the
next generation doesn't stand a chance of survival.
It
is beyond comprehension that we can live with ourselves in good
conscience while 640 million children in the world do not have adequate
shelter and 500 million have no access to sanitation. What excuse could
there possibly be for 270 million children lacking healthcare and 90
million being severely food-deprived? And why is it that 140 million
children (mostly girls) have never been to school and more than a
million children throughout the world work in mines?
It is
crucial to understand that these problems are not exclusive to
non-industrialized nations. In 11 out of 15 industrialized nations, for
all of our affluence and wealth, the proportion of children living in
low-income households has risen during the last decade.
Here
in the United States, one out of six children live in poverty. In the
state of Alabama, a whopping half of all public schoolchildren live in
poverty and in one county, the rate is 100%. One in eight (9.3 million)
children in the U.S. have no health insurance.
Further,
according to the Children's Defense Fund's "The State of America's
Children 2004," an estimated three million American children a year are
suspected victims of child abuse and neglect, eight die from gunfire
each day and almost one out of every ten teens between the ages of 16
to 19 is a school dropout. Last year the rate of juvenile homicides in
Washington, DC doubled. It should perhaps come as no surprise, given
how we treat our own children, that the U.S. is one of only two
countries that have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the
Child (the other is Somalia).
Armed conflict throughout the
world inflicts a profoundly heinous toll on the lives of children. Save
The Children reports that some three million children are involved in
armed conflict, of which approximately 40% are girls, many as young as
eight years of age. Most of the girls and many of the boys have
been sexually violated.
According to UNICEF, during the last
decade, two million children have been killed in conflicts, between
four and five million have been disabled. Twelve million children have
been left homeless and more than one million orphaned or separated from
their parents. Ten million children have been psychologically
traumatized. In countries experiencing conflict, children who are
detained are often treated as adults. Seymour Hersh reports that
according to Pentagon documents, hundreds of children have been held by
U.S. forces in Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and we have learned
recently about children being held at Guantanamo. (1)
The
U.S. is certainly not the only country to incarcerate children. In a
recent interview with Justin Podur, human rights advocate Sahar Francis
explained that Israel also has a policy of incarcerating children,
"Israel
does not apply the international definition of a child (under 18) to
Palestinian children, though it does apply that definition to its own
children, for the purposes of incarceration. According to the military
orders Palestinian children of 16 years old are jailed as adults. There
are no juvenile courts in the military system Palestinians are subject
to (there are in the Israeli civil system for Israeli children). The
same torture practices are used against children as against adults.? (2)
The
toxic nature of modern weaponry has a particularly devastating impact
on the lives of children. In Vietnam, some 150,000 children born to
those exposed to Agent Orange during the war 30 years ago have been
born with birth defects. Perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel used
by the military, has recently been found in water and breast milk
samples in numerous locations in the United States. A known carcinogen,
it is not yet clear what the impact of this toxin is on the health of
children.
In Iraq, doctors report a significant rise in birth
defects and childhood cancer during the last few years, likely due to
the parent's exposure to depleted uranium and radiation and other
chemical weapons. Birth defects have increased from a rate of 11 per
100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 in 2001. There were 650
reported cases in public hospitals between August 2003 and May
2005. The incidence of cancer among children rose 242% in the
years between 1990 and 1999. Since much more depleted uranium was used
in the recent war than in the early 1990?s and since many cancers take
several years to develop, the rates are expected to continue to rise.
In addition, the rate of malnutrition among Iraqi children under the
age of five has doubled since the U.S. invasion of Iraq according to
the UN Human Rights Commission.
It is likely that we are only
just beginning to comprehend the serious consequences that
environmental pollution and damage has for children. In Immokalee, FL,
clusters of birth defects are being found among babies born to migrant
farm workers who were exposed to pesticides. Indeed, a suit was
recently filed by a coalition of farm workers, environmentalists and
public health advocates alleging that the EPA has failed to protect
children from pesticides used on farms. Doctors also believe that as
many as 600,000 babies suffer permanent brain damage because of their
mothers' exposure to Mercury emitted from power plants that is absorbed
by fish and then consumed by pregnant women.
Earlier this
year, the New York Times published a frightening list of toxins now
found regularly in breast milk. They included, PCB's, dioxin,
trichloroethylene, perchlorate, mercury, lead, benzene and arsenic
coming from sources such as paint thinner, dry-cleaning fluids, wood
preservatives, toilet deodorizers, cosmetic additives, gasoline
byproducts, rocket fuel, termite poisons, fungicides and flame
retardants. It is also now known that women who breathe air polluted
with smoke and exhaust fumes are up to 4 times more likely to have
children who develop cancer.
A recent study also found that
gender-bending phthalates (used to make plastic more pliable) have been
found in the urine of pregnant women. Boys born to women with higher
levels of four different phthalates were more likely to have smaller
penises, undescended testicles and other feminizations similar to those
seen in animals exposed to these chemicals. The report also noted that
when this occurs in male animals, levels of aggression, as well as
parenting and learning skills are affected.
Girls throughout the
world are at particular risk. According to Dr. Lynette Dumble of the
Global Sisterhood Network, some 200 million girls are missing from
expected populations, with the worst occurrences taking place in
countries such as India and China, victims of female feticide and
infanticide. Further, hundreds of thousands of girls have been
trafficked throughout the world, sold for body parts and sexually and
economically enslaved. (3)
As
I have sifted through the evidence of our collective irresponsibility,
I keep asking myself what it says when all the sordid pieces are added
together, and praying for some divine insight as to how to end these
tragedies. I have two wonderful and precious children whom I love
fiercely, and for whom I would do anything necessary to protect their
well-being. If anything happened to them, it would be a wound from
which I would never recover.
But the imperative for ending
abusive behavior towards the world's children goes beyond moral or
emotional repugnancy, it's also a lousy investment policy. Children are
the future of our species, if we do not care for and nurture them, we
humans have little to look forward to.
Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, www.feministpeacenetwork.org which publishes Atrocities,
a bulletin documenting violence against women throughout the world. Her
work has been published in numerous publications including, Awakened Woman, Alternet, Dissident Voice, Off Our Backs, The Progressive, Rain and Thunder, Z Magazine, Common Dreams and Information Clearinghouse. Copyright ©2005 by Lucinda Marshall
REFERENCES
1) The Unknown Unknowns Of The Abu Ghraib Scandal: 10 Inquiries Into Prisoner Abuse Have Let Bush & Co Off The Hook by Seymour Hersh, The Guardian -- UK, May 21, 2005.
2) Palestinians in Israel's Prisons by Sahar Francis and Justin Podur, ZNET, May 19, 2005.
3) Female Imperilment in the Third Millennium by Dr. Lynette J. Dumble, Said It Vol. 3 No. 3, 2001.
Other Articles by Lucinda Marshall
* Media Exclusion of Women as Sources Impedes Meaningful Reform
* Military Pollution: The Quintessential Universal Soldier
* Honoring the Lives of Women in Perilous Times
* Why We are Horrified by the Destructive Forces of Nature but Accept Our Own Violence
* The Financial Immorality of American Generosity
* The Surreality Show: Stranger than Fiction
* (Not) In The News: Media Culpability in the Continuum of Violence Against Women
* Yanar Mohammed on the Impact of the US Occupation on the Lives of Iraqi Women
* The Misogynist Undercurrents of Abu Ghraib
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