"Restoring Family ties" a positive title for an endless work on displacement, refugees, families torn apart, children in war zones.. Dar Al Funoon hosts an exhibition by artists in Kuwait and the full proceeds will go to fund the International comittee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on monday 29th of june 09.
The photo here (extract from a book: "Humanitarian in war" by ICRC) is titled "Famine in Russia in 1922", where children are the first victims as they are everywhere else.
Open your fridge and take a second to think about what you have and what you can spare for others.
Hold your loved ones and send a warm wish for those who are in refugees camp.
ICRC is celebrating 150 years of the Solferino battle, in the north of Italy (1863) when a young Swiss businessman Henri Dunant, started with the idea of immediate response in war, a spontaneous gesture to help wounded soldiers. He received the Nobel prize in 1901 and his organization became an establishment in reaching out to millions of war victims around the world for 140 years. The main intention is an independent, impartial and neutral help.
The Man in charge of the ICRC Kuwait delegation, Mr Jean-Michel Monod has experience of war zones in the most awkward and the most incredible situations. After many years of terrain, he can actually see beyond the horror of wars, brutal death and destruction; he has a quick eye for the humanity in each and the search of joy at all moment. He might not foresee the end of global wars, but he seeks peace with a helping hand at a time.
The photo here (extract from a book: "Humanitarian in war" by ICRC) is titled "Famine in Russia in 1922", where children are the first victims as they are everywhere else.
Open your fridge and take a second to think about what you have and what you can spare for others.
Hold your loved ones and send a warm wish for those who are in refugees camp.
ICRC is celebrating 150 years of the Solferino battle, in the north of Italy (1863) when a young Swiss businessman Henri Dunant, started with the idea of immediate response in war, a spontaneous gesture to help wounded soldiers. He received the Nobel prize in 1901 and his organization became an establishment in reaching out to millions of war victims around the world for 140 years. The main intention is an independent, impartial and neutral help.
The Man in charge of the ICRC Kuwait delegation, Mr Jean-Michel Monod has experience of war zones in the most awkward and the most incredible situations. After many years of terrain, he can actually see beyond the horror of wars, brutal death and destruction; he has a quick eye for the humanity in each and the search of joy at all moment. He might not foresee the end of global wars, but he seeks peace with a helping hand at a time.
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The Financial Crisis Means More Child Labor
The Numbers:
Total number of children 5-14years, 2004: 1.2 billion
Child workers worldwide, 2004: 166 million
What They Mean:
International Labor Organization researchers, quoting children working in rural northern Ghana.
"Stress; exhaustion; sunburn; too much heat; backache; long working hours;a lack of good drinking water; falling trees; tripping on ropes; wounds from machetes; using bare hands to apply fertilizer...."
Their experience is the typical one: More than two-thirds of the world's working children are on the land. The ILO's 2006 report The End of Child
Labor: Within Reach, noted that (as of 2004) about 190 million of the
world's 1.1 billion children aged 5-14 were "economically active" and that 166 million of them were engaged in child labor. Supplemented last week by a new report focusing on girl workers, the ILO's research divides the
totals as follows:
Agriculture: Roughly 115 million child laborers, 69 percent of all
working children, are on farms, including both small-scale family
farming and larger-scale plantations. Last week's update suggests that agriculture employs about 61 percent of the world's working girls, and 70 percent of the working boys.
Urban services: About 22 percent of working children, or 37 million, are
in low-level services work. These are fields like maids, newspaper
carriers, restaurant workers, street sweepers, and so on. Many more girls -- 30 percent of all working girls -- are in these fields.
Industry: Industrial work accounts for the remaining 9 percent of child
workers, or 15 million. Most, according to the 2009 update, are in
manufacturing, including factory work and home production. A smaller
number are in construction, and about 1 million are in the especially dangerous mining and quarrying industries.
The 2006 report, though full of still unhappy statistics, was optimistic.
It found child labor rapidly declining. One reason is the general decline in poverty; World Bank researchers find that child labor rates tend to fall
by 4.7 percent in poor countries with each additional $100 jump in per capita GDP. Another is that child labor seems to be an area in which innovative government policies, especially in Latin America, have worked.
In the late 1990s, many Latin governments, led by Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, began paying small stipends to low-income families who can show good school attendance. The ILO found Latin child labor rates nose-diving,
down by two-thirds from 16 million in 2000 to 5.7 million by 2004. And
while Latin America's progress was fastest, child labor rates were falling
everywhere, especially for young children and in abusive industries.
The 2009 follow-up is more worried than optimistic, especially for girls.
After a decade of rapid progress, it suggests, this year's financial crisis may push many children in rural areas out of school and into work, as parents and older siblings lose urban factory and construction jobs and families fall into poverty. The report believes that girls are at especially high risk, since low-income parents often pull girls out of school before boys. Short-term options to reduce the risk will include emergency financial support for laid-off adult workers and preservation of
stipends for low-income parents during budget cuts. In a longer
perspective, though, the ILO remains optimistic, looking to generation reduction of poverty, universal education, and effective labor-inspection (especially in agriculture) as proven ways to reduce and (one hopes) to end
child labor.
If you were a ten year old child, which would you choose: hunger or hard labor for food?
Why is it that in 2009, with a surplus of food production in the western world and such waste, do we still have to ask this question?
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