War, children and hope

Photo Credits: EDIT main_1

When the corpse of Aylan Kurdi washed on the shores of Turkey, it shook the collective conscience of the world. The death could have been ignored as one of the hundreds of deaths when Syrians have died in shootings or bombings or have been killed during treacherous journeys to flee. But, Aylan was a three-year-old. Worse, the child was not alone in his death. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based organization, documents that close to 12,000 Syrian children have been killed since 2011.

Throughout the history of conflict, it is the images of children - helpless, dying or dead - that have changed the course of international dialogue. Many of these photos of children do raise delicate ethical issues of privacy in death and grief. It is unfair that death brought world's outpouring affection to Aylan. But then, photo journalism has always been a tricky, emotionally tumultuous calling. Many photographers do not have the time to analyse the consequences of their photos in action; they often go by instinct and a commitment to document. One can't deny that in their brutal depictions, such photos indeed shake up the world to acknowledge bitter truths in other parts of the country, or the world.

Take for example the visual of a naked nine-year-old girl in Vietnam fleeing after being burnt on the back due to a napalm bombing; the 1972 photo by Associated Press's Nick Ut won the Pulitzer. Or remember the stony green-eyed stare of Sharbat Gula, a refugee from Afghanistan, captured by Steve McCurry in 1984 that appeared on the cover of National Geographic. Look up a photo story called 'Children of War' compiled by Boston Globe (bostonglobe.com) and you will see many more Aylans waiting to be mourned and many more Sharbats stunned into silent resignation.

This month again, Aylan's photo taken by Nilüfer Demir went viral and got much-needed international attention to the Syrian conflict. The Don Bosco International Short Film Festival of India recently screened the documentary 'Not Anymore' in Panaji. The film on Syrian crisis shot by Matt Van Dyke and Nour, had a fantastic scene where a rebel fighter called Mowaya mocked the world's aloofness to the Syrian crisis by urging the cameraman to take shots of cats. "If they see there are cats in Syria, perhaps they will say, '"Oo, they have cats, poor cats, let's go save them.'" It is sad that cats and dogs get more views on YouTube than videos of refugee children. We perhaps feel safe in our escapism because we run away from seeing images that force us to acknowledge our deepest fears.

According to Unesco reports, in the last decade alone, two million children have been killed in armed conflict, another six million have been wounded or disabled for life and one million have become orphans. More than 300,000 children are estimated to be enrolled in militia groups. The site childrenandarmedconflict.un.org documents the chilling account of lives of children in conflict zones. The United Nations Security Council has identified six grave violations - killing and maiming of children; recruitment as soldiers; sexual violence; attacks against schools or hospitals; denial of humanitarian access and abduction.

According to a May 2013 press release of The Asian Centre for Human Rights, at least 3,000 children in India - about 500 in North East and Jammu and Kashmir and about 2,500 in Naxal-affected areas —are involved in conflict. According to information based on a June 2015 Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council published on childrenandarmedconflict.un.org, armed groups in India, including the Naxalites, recruit children as young as six years of age. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Naxalites in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha States recruit boys and girls between ages 6 and 12 years as informers and train them to fight with sticks. At the age of 12, these children reportedly start training to handle weapons and use improvised explosive devices.

Abductions of children, as armed recruits or as sex slaves, are a gory reality everywhere. In April 2014, an Islamist Jihadist group called Boko Haram, which literally means 'Education is a sin,' kidnapped close to 300 higher secondary girl students from Chibok, a primarily Christian town in Nigeria. The outfit has reportedly massacred 17,000 people since 2009 and its leader, Abubakar Shekau, has been quoted as saying, "I kill them (people) like I kill chickens."

The deterioration of any society is proven when its depravity takes on even its children. The number of sexual assaults on minors in recent times makes one feel that indeed we are living in Kali Yuga, the worst era of human existence as described in Hinduism. Most religions keep children on a pedestal. Janmashtami, celebrated last week, rejoices the birth of Lord Krishna and there is a very strong symbolism that reveres children as God in Hindu Vaishnav followers.

Children, wherever they live, connect humanity across man-made boundaries. They come closest to the physical presence of God, if there were any, and are hope and love personified. While most images of children in conflict zones or natural disasters are haunting, there are also visuals - like that of an infant who was rescued unscathed from the rubble of Nepal earthquake in April 2015, or photos of babies who miraculously survive bombings - that urge humanity to step up for its children, if not for anything else.