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The Eight Millennium development goals cont.

Step Four: Reducing Child Mortality

Parents, they say, are responsible for the survival of their babies. Parents teach us attachment, symbolize safety and the closest relationship there can be. Even from evolutionary perspective, one is interested in preserving his or her genes and transmitting them to the next generations. Thus, human beings, collectively, are supposed to care about their children and guarantee their survival in order to preserve our kind. The paradox is that we are able to analyze such complicated biological-psychological issues and we run social organizations that circulate billions of dollars around the world in order to grant children in need a life, and yet, the way almost everything else is degressing, gives little hope for the generations to come. Children, being the most vulnerable part of humanity are highly dependent upon the care they receive and the atmosphere they live in.

On one side, we fear that our children face a lot of daily stress, never to have been imagined before, and are forced to live up the enormous expectations we put on their brittle shoulders. Needless to say, children today are the victims of the 24/7 regime. On the other side, 2.3 million children under age of 15 are the victims of HIV/AIDS related disease. 12 million more lives of people at age from 15 to 24 are claimed by the deadly virus. Poor quality of life in countries like India turns malaria and diarrhea into mortal diseases. A fact we thought was changed for good after the Great Plague in England in 1665. On the contrary, more that 700 000 children under the age of 5 still die from diarrhea in India, alone.

Some people assume it is only uncivilized societies that do not care about a child’s life. Those of us who have heard about the abduction of children in Uganda and the ‘lost boys of Sudan’ view that as the monstrous act of savages that can be annihilated by the hand of civilization and progress.

In Uganda, child soldiers who managed to escape their captors are brought to a rehabilitation center in Gulu, where Anna Karih has photographed their life and spoken to one of the boys. The eighteen-years-old John (not his real name), is one of the ex-soldiers, who personally knows how difficult it is to integrate to the community again and try to lead a normal life. After he has been abducted twice, the boy realizes how much he has changed: Before I was abducted I was a happy school boy, I had five sisters and one brother.” Now John and many other boys are happy in the new Gusco center, where they take part in cleaning and cooking. The children also go to group sessions aiming to erase the memories of the abduction, when children watched their friends and siblings being tortured to death. When compared to such cases, our daily stress does not appear that frightening anymore. John considers himself very lucky to be still alive. He remembers how the rebels used to drag him along and beat him while discussing the best way to kill him. “I could only think about running away again. But now they didn’t trust me and they watched me all the time.” He believes his luck showed when he was shot in the hip during a battle, so that the rebels left him behind. This gave him his second chance to have a life, out of the nightmare of abduction.

These boys did not break a leg during a basketball play, they are soldiers shot during battle.

How do many civilized societies try to protect our children? We decide to make a difference by putting children in the army. Since the release of the eight Millennium Developmental goals, many countries got involved in the so called War against Terrorism, which many consider to be the prelude to a Third World War. There is hardly a military conflict in the history of men that did not rely on the vital energy of young people to fuel its operations. The Statistical Information Analysis Division of the Defense Manpower Data Center shows that for the last three years, when we were supposedly working to reduce child mortality, we have the greatest percentage of military deaths of people younger that 22, in The United States only.