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| Sunday, 29 September 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Now that the war is over... : What about us? by Jayanthi Liyanage
Universal Chidren's Day is on October 1. And as the world prepares to commemorate the day with appropriate fanfare, here in Sri Lanka, it is time for some soul-searching and to find answers to a pertinent question. what about our children? Or, more specifically, where have we placed the welfare of children - an entire generation born and bred amidst war and violence - in the peace mechanism which has political amity and economic resurgence as its major framework? Just think of it. Every single child in our country today was born into and has grown up, experiencing the uncertainties, the fears and the destructive terror of armed conflict, either directly or indirectly.
Today, we have more than 270,000 internally displaced children who lost homes or had their families brutally killed or torn from them, in the horrific ravages of war. Thousands of them lost either one or both parents. Think of the near-impossibe task of locating their relatives or re-homing them in foster homes. "Landmines and pressure mines were laid over the Jaffna peninsula and they appeared almost like the mushroom growth after heavy rain," Mahendran (17) says. Thousands of children were killed or maimed in the war and hundreds lost their limbs to the invisible stalker of landmines. sixty five per cent of the Sri Lankans say the war affected, by death or injury, at least one family member, close friend or relative. Many children had to undergo the totally unprepared-for trauma of being forcibly employed as child soldiers. There were children who had no school to attend, for many years; children who during the day hid in jungles and had rudimentary lessons in makeshift schools; and children who spent long years in refugee camps and do not have an inkling to this day of how to read and write. Many could not handle schooling and were forced to labour for survival. Children usually make more than half of refugee populations.
Bamini (14) of Jaffna who was displaced many times with her family, says, "When we were displaced, we did not have any food to eat, no water to drink and no place to stay....Every time we were displaced, we studied in different schools...I have studied in seven schools so far." It is a fact that nine out ten people killed in modern wars are civilians. And half of them are women and children. Fifty five per cent of children of Sri Lanka had to live fearing the country's future and theirs. One in three were constantly haunted by thoughts of war. The shock and grief of sudden deprivation made many lose interest in life and left them in deep depression. "Imagine what it must be for children living with fighting, bomb shelling and war around them..a bomb and violence is like a movie to us, but for them a peaceful place would have been like a movie," says Sharmilla (15) of Colombo. Have we shown these children how to tackle the grave psycho - social trauma they are left to live with, the irreparable inheritance of armed conflict?
In the last decade, conflict situations across the world have killed over two million children, displaced 20 million and orphaned over one more million. Over six million children have been seriously injured or permanently disabled as a result of conflict. And 300,000 child soldiers are engaged in combat. About 800 are killed and maimed by landmines every month and over 10 million children have been left with grave psychological trauma. Impressive statistics, you would think. But what have we done for them?
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