Blog

70% of children in Africa don’t get necessary education on HIV/AIDS prevention and will therefore likely contract the disease.  Children and young people in well-developed nations are highly prone to boredom and have higher suicidal and self-harming tendencies. 2 million children have died as a consequence of conflict in the past ten years. 1 in 3 women in developing world is married before 18.  230,000 people died during the Earth Quake in Haiti... Not a pleasant start of a blog, I apologize. I also apologize beforehand for these figures, since, in most likelihood, after sometime you will hear that they were actually not correct and need to be downgraded. What am I talking about? Figures about the suffering of people and children tend to be exaggerated. There are many reasons for this, such as difficulties in accessing information, but one major reason also is this: many parties have a vested interest in inflated numbers since those will lead to political and financial gains (maybe  with good intentions, namely to generate more support and money for victims, but still). I think it’s time we, as the ‘development aid’ sector, owe up to and stop this practice. Not because I think that there should not go money to children in need, of course not. But I do think that in order to ensure long term support for relief efforts and development aid, it would be better to present real figures.

But that’s not the only reason in my view. Even more important is that we have to stop the ‘victimization’ of children. What has become clear from all kinds of research in the past decades is that children and young people have an incredible capacity for resilience. Completely counterintuitive to many, is the fact that most children that live in very difficult circumstances tend to become healthy, productive grown up members of their societies. Many factors play a role in strengthening this resilience, like the availability of adult support and innate qualities (a bit of intelligence helps, for example). In these hyperactive, stressful times, in which any moment the doomsday clock is expected to ring, and where a complete economic meltdown is looming, it’s good to look in another, more positive direction. In the past 50 years the number of armed conflicts has gone down dramatically, the infant mortality rate has decreased spectacular, more and more children are in school, child labour is on a steady decline, and there are many more such positive trends. These are facts. Likely you won’t hear that much about them though. Everybody seems to prefer the gloomy picture, of a world on the verge of collapse with millions of children as (potential) victims. This doesn’t do justice to the innate resilience of children and their parents and communities all over the world. And it doesn’t really help either. Investing in resilience makes more sense than investing in resignation, doesn’t it? Happy New Year. 

Mathijs Euwema
Director ICDI

Since the Dutch Child Rights Home also wants to have an international presence and appeal, from now on I will write my blogs in English.

In my last (and first) blog I wrote about the youth revolutions that are gripping the Arab world. This is still continuing, albeit less successfully than in the first two countries (Tunisia and Egypt), and with much more repression and bloodshed (Libya, Jemen, Syria). But other disasters (Japan) have taken precedent in the media, as have domestic worries here in the "Western World". I still want to mention the Arab youth movement in my blog, since I think it may well turn out to be one of the defining moments in the world's history. At the least I think it will proof to be a huge turning point for Arabic-Islamic society, finally catapulting it towards real freedom.

But it's not only in the Arab world where young people are rising to the occasion. Everywhere you can find young girls and boys who stand up to fight for their rights. Two of the organizations in the Child Rights Home (ICDI and Irewoc) are inviting a group of seven of such young people to come for a visit to The Netherlands in May 2011. They are coming from Liberia, Palestine, Peru, Guatamala, Zambia, Ethiopia and Pakistan. I just want to highlight the work of one of them here: 

Getahun Wuletaw (18 years) comes from Ethiopia. Getahun grew being inquisitive of the respect of children's rights despite the many difficulties he faced following the death of his father at his early age. Having a strong conviction that children should not live in destitution, powerlessness and unsafe environments because of deep rooted poverty, Getahun began advocating for the respect of children's right to lead healthy life, education and freedom from any abuse. Getahun is now an active member (also chaired) his school's child right clubs and a speaker of the child parliament in Hawassa. He contributed greatly to the establishment of the child parliament and speaks on behalf of his fellow students for the respect of their rights. He also educates the public on the rights of children through local medias such as FM radio, newsletters, school mini media, and individually among his peers and in his neighbourhood. Getahun has actively struggled against some harmful traditional practices such as early marriage, corporal punishment at schools and any form of harassment of girls at school wash rooms. Thanks to his efforts, currently corporal punishment and the multifaceted harassment perpetuated against his fellow girl students has been abolished from his school. This has also been replicated in other schools with his continued and determined facilitation and dialogue. A bit of a hero, this unknown young man from Ethiopia.

During their visit to The Netherlands in May 2011 Getahun and his fellow young child right advocates will work on project proposals during a 2-day seminar, meet other youth groups in The Netherlands and present their child right projects at a public meeting in the Child Rights Home.  

I expect you will hear a lot from these dynamic young people in the future. The world is changing, and it is changing fast.

Mathijs Euwema
Director ICDI