Hello All,
This is a speech I composed for my public speaking assignment about of the bruatlity of War affecting children -not only in Palestine- but world wide too. Please post your comments and opinions about it so i can further better it 🙂
When children take happiness for granted, living with it, laughing to it, a companion, holding your hand, everything feels radiant, bright, and the future is secured. But once it’s gone, it can destroy a person more than for those who never tasted it. Its sweet memories feel like slicing daggers through your reality. Snip. Snip. Snip. Reminding you of the pleasure you may never taste again. Then you feel like darkness has taken hold of the world, the sun… like it disappeared. When you feel like suffocating despair has engulfed you, no hope, and no happiness. This terrible loneliness takes hold of your soul, breaking you, stealing every happy memory you may have ever held close to your heart; those moments full of smiles, laughter, adventures, lessons and love. War can have this impact on you, tipping your scale of life, unbalancing your world forever. To war, it’s all about breaking the smiles of children, taking away the lives of their mama and baba, friends and homes they took for granted. Children of the many wars taking place in the world today have been endlessly grieving for these shadowy momentums when they were once content happy children. Today, I hope to truly captivate you with what our cruel world has reached to nowadays. About the wars affecting children like you and me, about the child soldiers forced into the playground of death, and the Rights, not wrongs of children.
Many children today are being added to the ever growing list of orphans, outcasts, beggars, the abused, the diseased, the forever traumatically scarred. These children, are just like you and me, they’ve done nothing wrong. But the big boys up there think war is a way to show power over one another. Years ago, going into a battle field had its own honorable quota of ‘defend our countries; protect civilians, women and children… Especially children’. But modern war fare has played with these rules. What used to be official declaration of war, is now a bomb greeting, where what used to be a battle field, there are land mines, where there used to be children safe at home, there are children now faced to fight these wars, whether behind a weapon, or in the struggle for survival. In the past decade, an estimated 2 million children were killed in war, 1 million orphaned and left to fend for themselves, and 4 million more permanently damaged and emotionally withdrawn, even if suffering no loss, but just witnessing the ongoing feuds can trigger traumatisation. “For children, the deepest scars of war and flight are the hidden ones,” said Graca Machel, former Minister of Education in Mozambique. And these atrocities do not stop there. Homes, schools, and even hospitals are bombed. Supply routes and storages are brunt and cut off. International efforts to aid children are held off, and slowed down. How could humanity, a word meaning the qualities or characteristics displaying kindness or compassion for other human beings as whole be yet again so cruel?
As a child, for mostly boys, you’ve probably liked to play pretend soldier, thinking yourself as a hero in a battle, a dream come true. But today, this is a nightmarish reality; Child Soldiers younger than age TEN are kidnapped and forced into becoming soldiers, out of deep desperation for power. Many teens today are very familiar with the criminal figure publicized known as Joseph Kony from Uganda. He is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army with nothing lordly about it. It is a terrorist movement in Uganda that has been known to kidnap countless children as young as age 8 from their homes and schools. They are beat and abused into submission, and transformed into heartless killers. Young girls become soldier’s wives. For initiation before admittance into the army, children and new recruits must sacrifice the life of another child, preferably a sibling, or else be killed themselves. Thousands of children are known to be under his speechlessly malicious control. Only feeble aid has been sent from the U.S. after a youth organisation raised awareness in the media. Aside from this notorious child abused army, millions more are dragged to war fighting against poverty and revolutionary uprisings. Innocent children of Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Tunisia, Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, and many more are equally conflicted and hurt beyond repair. Why can’t they live as normal ordinary children should? Or have we retained a new definition of ordinary in a world like this today?
Children have their rights to many every day necessities. 1979 was the International Year of The child, where many nations discussed how to better children’s lives and to create rights for these children worldwide. The U.S. established a convention recognizing “inherent dignity and …equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” They set up global principles over the children’s obvious right to live, survive, develop and have opinions, regardless of religion, race, past or gender. 191 of 193 countries today are working to keep up to that treaty. But, unlike to its word, the U.S. is not part of it. Despite the U.N.’s UNICEF’s efforts, no mass recoveries or changes are being made as wars and conflicts loom in every corner of the world. In fact, and this saddens me much, not a single country in the world is not directly or indirectly involved in a war.
What world have those before us created? Why can’t children, we children, live in a world free of conflict, hate, greed, violence, deception, discrimination, brutality, malice, and destruction. Why can’t we live in a world of Peace? A world where there is contribution, help, sharing, understanding, acceptance and love. Where lies the answer that will stop children living in war? That will prevent the creation of child armies? That would enforce child rights-not wrong? Us- we-you-and I- can. We are the future generation of tomorrow. We must work together to make a shining, prosperous new world for all. Fix what those before us have broken, and insure the safety of our children, for many more generations to come. In this world there are future leaders, presidents, journalists, doctors, teachers, athletes, engineers, authors, reporters, scientists,the list can go on, but all with life changing potentials. But we can-still-start-now. Raise awareness, support charities, discuss and arrange protests and live every moment of our lives trying to protect children like us from ever facing hellish fates experienced before. I want you to walk away today not thinking about how well your colleagues presented, but how it’s going to change you. We all have dreams for ourselves, but sometimes dreams must encompass the others around us unable to dream and achieve for themselves. Dr. Seuss once quoted that “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Palestine Today 