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| Sunday, 9 January 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Saving the children of tsunami by Carol Aloysius It is a grim scene that is currently being re-enacted in almost every coastal town in this island.
Yet while their material needs are being looked after, only a tiny fraction of these displaced persons have had access to one of their most urgent needs; namely, some form of help to heal those deep mental scars that have permanently altered their lives and disfigured their outlook on life as a whole. It is ironical that such emotional scars caused by seeing their homes and loved ones being swept away by the sea should now be compounded by an additional threat; of being preyed upon by sex vultures who roam these camps targeting the most vulnerable, at a time when they most need to be comforted and protected. The worst affected by emotional and physical abuse in these overcrowded camps are of course women and children. Only a few days ago a newspaper ( not Lake House) reported that several unscrupulous persons were preying on tsunami survivors taking advantage of the lax security in the refugee centres. It quotes the Women and Media Collective as expressing concern over the safety and well-being of women in particular which it said had not been addressed upto now. Not only women but children too have been preyed upon by these human vultures. News reports have cited instances of children in refugee camps being sexually abused ( two have been reported by the Karapitiya hospital) or else forcibly taken away by so-called `adoptive parents' without going through the expected legal procedures. Which is why an accurate data base of newly orphaned children is the need of the hour at the moment before a needs assessment survey can be made, so that any relief or remedial measure to be put into gear could be activated. The exact number of children orphaned by the tsunami disaster has yet to be compiled. Nonetheless, data collected in some of the affected districts indicate that the number is considerable. According to Prof. Harendra de Silva, Chairperson of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), some 28 children in the Galle district have been orphaned; 126 are without a mother and 76 have lost their father. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy told a Colombo Press conference that she was informed there were some 3,000 new orphans in the North alone. With the NCPA, the Social Services Department, the Probation and Child Care Services, UNICEF, and of course the Provincial Councils in each of these affected areas working round the clock, it won't be long before we get a clearer picture of the number of children who have been left alone in the world as a result of the tsunami disaster. Yet, getting this information is not exactly an easy task for all those involved. Visiting these camps and locating these children can pose huge obstacles considering the extent of damage done to the roads and lack of support services to help these data collectors. To quote Ms. A.K.I. Amarasiri, Provincial Commissioner for the Southern Province: "Our problem is going to these places. Although UNICEF has offered to pay the three wheeler hires to locate these children because the Probation Department hasn't enough vehicles, we still have a lot of walking to do as most of the roads are broken up or else families are still stranded on mountains and hills. We are also faced with many practical problems such as, lack of communication (the telephone line to our office which was damaged badly at Hambantota for example are still out of order) we have run out of paper as most of the book shops have been washed away; and in many instances, when we reach the homes of some of the children, we find that the houses are no longer there, and families have been washed away by the sea. In some instances, the Child Rights Protection Officers (CRPO's) who are working in these districts and expected to do this work, have also lost their lives to the sea". Yet despite these hitches, she said some of the work have already been completed and the next step would be to obtain more information at Divisional Secretariat level.Given these practical difficulties however, she added. "It may take us over a week to cover each area although we are working hard to meet the given deadline". While the biggest challenge facing all those currently compiling data on child survivors of the tsunami is to actually locate them, identifying them and their families poses an equally daunting task. Once they are located, answers will have to be found to equally important questions such as: Who are these children? From where are they? Where are their homes? Who are their relatives? How many of them are languishing in camps? How many in houses of friends and relatives? How many have been forcibly taken on the pretence of adoption? And most importantly, where will they go from there? "Our priority is for the orphaned children because they are the most vulnerable". says a spokesman for the NCPA, who have sent out teams to the affected areas and have already visited most of the camps in Galle and are now in Matara and Hambantota. "We are trying to get volunteers to visit the North" the spokesman said. A large number of medical and law students as well as the UNICEF, the Probation and Child Care Services and the ILO and IPEC are also helping in this massive task of compiling data on child victims of the tsunami. Getting together this data bank on child survivors of the tsunami is obviously important as the first step towards rehabilitating them. As a spokesman for the Probation and Child Care Services points out, "It is only when we have this data that we can start taking remedial steps to help these children. If not we will have to depend on rumours. Once the data has been collected and we know exactly how many children have lost their parents, how many are in camps or elsewhere we can plan for their future ". Because of their youth and innocence, it is important to realise that a child in any situation including being in a refugee camp makes him or her very vulnerable, says Prof. Harendra de Silva. "We have to realise that child abuse can take place anywhere and not just in this situation and that many of these incidents will not be reported either", he emphasised. While admitting that a few cases of sexual abuse of children have been reported, he also urged that the focus should be shifted from the negative to the more positive aspects that have emerged from the present scenario. "For example, after having obtained the exact number of children in the Galle district who have been newly orphaned or who have lost one parent in the tsunami,and where, we were able to immediately contact the Probation Commissioner in the area and request that these children be removed from the refugee camps and housed in temporary shelters provided with proper protection. As for those children who have already been taken away by relatives or friends, we are now in the process of locating them". What about counselling these children and giving them some form of emotional relief? "That can come later once we have separated these children from the adult refugees. Counselling a traumatised child needs to be a sustained effort. a one day counselling will be of no use", he points out. Helping children badly affected by man-made or natural disaster needs careful planning and foresight. Which as UNICEF Executive director, Carol Bellamy says, guidelines in handling this mammoth task could turn out to be a life saver for thousands of affected children. She says, "Whether it is India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Thailand or any other country hit by the tsunamis, there are four basic measures that must be implemented to give the tsunami devastated children a fighting chance. The relief effort must focus on children from the beginning. First relief efforts must focus on keeping children alive. This means clean water, adequate sanitation, basic nutrition and routine medical care. Keeping children who survived the floods alive and healthy must be our priority."Secondly, she underlines the importance of caring for separated Children." Across the region we must find children who have lost their families, identify them and re-unite them with their extended families and communities". Thirdly, we must ensure that children are protected from exploitation. "In a tumult like this", she notes," when families are broken apart, when incomes are lost, when dignity and hope are in short supply, children are more vulnerable to abuses. Our relief efforts must be conceived and carried out in a way that reduces these vulnerabilities and helps restore children's trust in the world. Finally, she underlines the importance of helping children cope with their traumas by getting them back to school in as quickly a time as possible. As she says, "Nothing will signal hope more clearly than rebuilding and reopening schools. Being in a learning environment gives children something positive to focus on, and enables the adults around them to go about their business with greater confidence". She cites an elderly woman who told UNICEF, "for our traumatised children, school will be the best medicine". The UNICEF spokesperson also estimates that children under 18 accounted for a large proportion of casualties of the recent tsunamis. Early assessments in Ampara, one of the worst affected districts, for example indicated that 50 per cent of deaths were among children, while many other children lost either one or both parents. Health authorities have also reiterated the fact that children in the tsunami affected areas are also more vulnerable to disease, malnutrition and psychological trauma. If on top of all these adverse effects, these same children have to face the threat of being traumatised again and again by sex perverts,some of them their own family members and others, so called carers who have offered them shelter, their future would be very bleak indeed. The danger is that unless they are rescued from these camps that house both law abiding and criminal segments of society, many of the orphaned children could easily end up as sex perpetrators if not commercial sex workers especially since they hail from the coastal belt in Hikkaduwa, Matara, Galle, which already have a reputation for having the highest incidence of child sex workers. Only the speedy intervention of the various child friendly authorities currently working in these districts to remove these children from their present refugee shelters can avert this tragic end to the young survivors of the tsunami. This then is the challenge that has to be taken up not only by the government or the NGOs working on behalf of children but by society as a whole. Nor do we have to wait for figures of hundreds of thousands to act. The children we see or know to be in danger are our real responsibility. |
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| Produced by Lake House |
Thousands upon thousands of refugees (178,886 families have been
displaced according to recent statistics) squeezed in overcrowded camps,
temples, churches and the few remaining schools, fighting for space, for
food, clothes and whatever relief they can get to help them pick up their
shattered lives and start living again.
