World War Orphan Day: A Glimpse of Painful lives of War Orphans
‘War’ is a catastrophic event that disturbs lives existing in the affected area. It brings destruction of material as well as non-material objects. Whereas most of the people, in general, can express their suffering, there is one set of people who silently suffer the aftermath of these horrific wars – children.
Many countries have become war zones and the civilians of those nations face the brunt of the suffering in war without choice. The neglected children are left without their families as a result of their loved ones becoming casualties from the war. Overnight, these children become orphans.
To celebrate the sacrifices made by these innocent souls, every year January 6, is commemorated as the World War Orphans Day. This is a day to raise awareness to the International Community of the numerous amounts of children who are affected by the outcome of warfare and left without families. This is a day to remember that there are children all over the world affected by war and each one of them deserves a better future.
The least one can do is to acknowledge the tragedy of the war that orphans usually endured.
Who is a War Orphan?
The usual definition of an orphan is a child who has no surviving parent to care for her or him, having lost both parents, either as a result of bereavement or by being abandoned. And, war orphan is a child who loses parents in a war.
As the most vulnerable population on earth, there is no one to protect them. Orphans around the world face many challenges: hunger, malnutrition, disease and most important and sadly most neglected the loss of social attention. Lack of these basic yet vital needs have long lasting effects on the children.
About the first Orphanage in History
The people of Rome were the first to take formal care of orphaned children. The Romans had formed their first orphanages around 400 AD.
Back then, Jewish law prescribed care for the widow and the orphan, and Athenian law supported all orphans of those killed in military service until the age of eighteen.
History of the World War Orphans Day and the Horrific Data of Orphans Worldwide
The celebration of the World War Orphans Day was started by the French organization SOS Enfants en detres.
If one looks at the historical estimates, World War II created millions of orphans with 300,000 orphans in Poland and 200,000 in Yugoslavia alone.
UNICEF (UN Children’s Emergency Fund) is a UN agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental support to children around the world. According to UNICEF, there are approximately 153 million orphans worldwide. As per the estimates, there are approximately 900,000 children in the North-eastern state, all of whom have been severely affected by the war, either due to lack of education, food, shelter or direct injuries.
Shockingly, in the last decade, the civilian death toll from armed conflict has significantly risen, to more than 90 per cent of which half of the victims are children. If numbers are to be believed, more than 2 million children have died in the last decade as a direct result of armed conflict. More than three times that number, at least 6 million children are permanently disabled or seriously injured. Many other children have witnessed parents and relatives being butchered in the most appalling circumstances.
Further, as a result of the human rights abuses and conflict, 20 million children are forced to flee their homes and become refugees in neighbouring countries or deported internally within their national borders.
More than 30 conflicts worldwide involve 300,000 child soldiers – boys and girls under the age of 18. These children soldiers are used to provide messengers, fighters, monkeys, cooks, and for brutal sex services. Some are forcibly abducted or recruited, while others resort to poverty, discrimination or abuse to avenge violence against themselves and their families.
After nearly 30 years of fighting, even today in Afghanistan, there are over 2 million orphan children with over 600,000 sleeping on the streets. Of this, more than 1 million suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome and the prevalence of the use of anti-personnel weaponry, which has resulted in over 400,000 children being maimed by land mines. Further, a quarter of all children in Afghanistan die before the age of 5, which according to UNICEF figures is the fourth-highest level in the world. Of those, who continue to survive, one in ten is severely malnourished and more than half suffer from stunted growth.
This is not just limited to Afghanistan, in Africa over 34 million children, or nearly 12%, are orphans either as a result of war or epidemics such as AIDS.
Northern Uganda has been at the receiving end of war raged for almost 18 years and has left the population in abject poverty. Following this, about 1.6 million people have been forced to leave their homes and farmers who were formerly self-sufficient are now forced to live in camps for internally displaced persons. Schools, homes, villages and families have all been destroyed and nobody knows how many have died. Imagine the state of children in such a stressful economy.
The situation of the developed nation is also not that bright. In such developed nations, orphans are relatively rare but in countries that have been and are subjected to wars and great epidemics such as AIDS, there are significant numbers of orphans.
What can be done for Orphan Children?
The best place for a child to grow up is in a stable family with a loving father and mother. It has been observed and proven beyond doubt by many psychological experts that children raised in orphanages experience emotional, social and physical barriers.
While one cannot stop wars at an individual level, but one can do the following kind acts for these children:
· Donate to orphan houses to the maximum of your capacity;
· Establish schools where these children can acquire education
· Aware to adopt such orphan kids and provide them with a real family;
· Organise a social gathering and aid in collecting funds for the orphanage houses;
· Select a fund working for a similar cause and contribute to it;
· Take it to your social media and spread awareness about either your social gathering or the particular fund;
· Anything else that one can do which will benefit these children.
Compassion is the least that these children need.
World War Orphans Day should be celebrated for the great sacrifices made by the innocent lives with no fault of their own.
