The world I want to live in takes care of children no matter what. There are no circumstances where a country, a government, a society, a community, a school, an organization or an adult does not protect and care for its children. Each of these entities is defined by its choices and priorities.
Children do not choose how they are born, where they are born and to whom they are born. Minors have zero control over what horrors can be and are inflicted on them. Yet there is a never ending list of atrocities happening this very minute to children in every corner of the world, here are a few examples and is in no way a full list:
- The child refugee crisis is the worst it has been since WWII. Many, many millions of children are fleeing brutal conflict and extreme poverty. This includes kids from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Burundi, Myanmar and the South Sudan. Countries taking in these child refugees include Uganda, Tanzania, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and Kenya. I think what is most notable about the second list is what countries are not listed.
- "Among the 1.3 million people who sought asylum in Europe in 2015 were nearly a hundred thousand unaccompanied children. Most were from Afghanistan and Syria. Thirteen per cent were younger than fourteen years old. The data for 2016 are incomplete, but the situation is comparable ... At an age at which most kids need supervision to complete their homework, these children cross continents alone."
- Human trafficking of children where they are used for sexual exploitation, pornography, forced labour, soldiers, slaves, forced or sham marriages and benefit fraud. While 28 per cent of detected trafficking victims worldwide are children, in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America and the Caribbean children comprise 62 and 64 per cent of victims, respectively.
- The number of asylum seekers including children and young people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and increased dramatically in recent years due to the increasingly targeted violence in their countries.
- "At least half of the states in the U.S. have seen their foster care capacity decrease between 2012 and 2017. Either these states have fewer beds and more foster youth, or any increase in beds has been dwarfed by an even greater increase in foster children and youth."
- On any given day, there are over 400,000 foster care kids in U.S. of which over half will remain in care for almost two years. The number in Texas ranges from 25,000 to 30,000 foster kids with over 3,500 needing adoptive parents.
- Far too many foster children get stuck in the system, having neither their biological family nor a permanent adoptive family. In 2014 alone, more than 22,000 young people were discharged from foster care and sent to live on their own.
- There are 15.5 million U.S. kids living in poverty. Kids in the U.S. experience higher poverty rates than most developed nations. Only Greece, Mexico, Israel and Turkey have higher child poverty rates than the U.S.
- Extreme poverty, measured at $1.90 per person per day, disproportionately affects children –387 million, or 19.5% of the world’s children live in extreme poverty compared to just 9.2% of adults. Children represent half of the poor yet are just one third of the underlying population.
- Fill in the Bullet ... the shameful number of ways we do not take care of children in this world and in the U.S. seems endless to me ... I did not even get to healthcare, abuse and education ...
We do not take care of our kids; define "WE" in a zillion different ways.
AND now, we have the American government with a stated policy of separating children from parents who arrive at our borders. From what I have gathered from reading and actual cases described by ACLU, this impacts those attempting illegal entry but also may and has applied to those seeking asylum - it appears to be happening before due process.
John Kelly, White House Chief of Staff, had the audacity to say when asked about this practice "The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long." Exactly how did "the child" who is being separated from their parent "elect to come illegally?"
Please note our own U.S. foster care system is woefully underfunded, understaffed and under-resourced. Texas has been found by a federal court to not be meeting the constitutional rights of foster care children in Texas. We KNOW these children of trauma (i.e. all foster kids) will have to overcome multitude of challenges that may hinder their ability to become healthy, productive, independent adults who our U.S. society will then view with scorn once they hit the magical age 18 if everything is not "just fine."
BUT hey, according to Kelly, we can place these children removed at the border in "foster care or whatever" ... because we have so much extra capacity and we are doing it so well now ... yes that is full of sarcasm.
John Kelly, White House Chief of Staff, had the audacity to say when asked about this practice "The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long." Exactly how did "the child" who is being separated from their parent "elect to come illegally?"
Please note our own U.S. foster care system is woefully underfunded, understaffed and under-resourced. Texas has been found by a federal court to not be meeting the constitutional rights of foster care children in Texas. We KNOW these children of trauma (i.e. all foster kids) will have to overcome multitude of challenges that may hinder their ability to become healthy, productive, independent adults who our U.S. society will then view with scorn once they hit the magical age 18 if everything is not "just fine."
BUT hey, according to Kelly, we can place these children removed at the border in "foster care or whatever" ... because we have so much extra capacity and we are doing it so well now ... yes that is full of sarcasm.
Does anyone think that the juvenile detention centers are actually caring for these children properly without further trauma? Do we think these facilities are free from abuse? Do we believe they are all safe? Do we think these kids are getting a developmentally appropriate education? Do we believe they are getting healthy food, adequate exercise and proper medical attention?
AND Department of Health and Human Services officials told Congress last month that they had lost track of nearly 1,500 unaccompanied migrant children who had been placed with adult sponsors. Does anyone actually believe these lost kids are safe?
This is not a political post. It is a post about how one chooses to live and view the human rights of every person. No life is more valuable than another. All children deserve love; they deserve a chance.
I will end repeating how I started:
The world I want to live in takes care of children no matter what. There are no circumstances where a country, a government, a society, a community, a school, an organization or an adult does not protect and care for its children. Children do not choose how they are born, where they are born and to whom they are born. Minors have zero control over what horrors can be and are inflicted on them.
SOURCES
https://www.unicefusa.org/mission/emergencies/child-refugees
https://www.savethechildren.org/us/what-we-do/emergency-response/refugee-children-crisis
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/europes-child-refugee-crisis
https://www.rescue.org/
https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/human-trafficking-numbers
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2016/December/almost-a-third-of-trafficking-victims-are-children_-unodc-report.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/seeking-asylum-in-the-u-s-under-trump
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/01/world/asylum-process-refugee-migrant-immigration-trnd/index.html
https://www.wola.org/analysis/fact-sheet-united-states-immigration-central-american-asylum-seekers/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/30/567615510/number-of-american-children-in-foster-care-increases-for-4th-consecutive-year
http://theconversation.com/the-hidden-harms-of-the-us-foster-care-system-49700
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/child-protective-services/collection/cps-evolving-foster-care-crisis-texas
https://txchildren.org/posts/2018/1/26/texas-should-begin-implementing-parts-of-of-the-foster-care-order-now
https://www.adoptuskids.org/adoption-and-foster-care/how-to-adopt-and-foster/state-information/texas
https://www.children.org/global-poverty/global-poverty-facts/facts-about-poverty-in-usa
https://data.unicef.org/topic/overview/child-poverty/
http://www.businessinsider.com/john-kelly-family-separation-policy-illegal-border-crossing-2018-5
https://psmag.com/news/children-will-now-be-separated-from-their-parents-at-the-u-s-border
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/389572-rick-santorum-migrant-children-the-government-lost-track-of-arent-lost
#notsilent #WhereAreTheChildren #fostercare #fosterparent #StandUpForChildren
