Afghanistan’s legacy of child opium addiction

by Cesar Chelala

NEW YORK – A report just released by the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan states that there were 2,754 civilian deaths and 4,805 civilian injuries in that country during 2012. Unmentioned is a serious side effect of the conflict: the high number of opium-addicted children in Afghanistan.

The number has increased systematically the past few years.

The situation is not limited to Afghanistan. Children are affected in Pakistan as well. In Karachi alone, there are tens of thousands of child addicts most of who receive no care or support. New and more effective policies are needed to address this situation.

A study conducted in Afghanistan showed that in 25 percent of homes where adult addicts lived there were signs of significant drug exposure in the children tested, some as young as 14 months. The children exhibited typical behavior for opium-heroin addicts: experiencing withdrawal when the drug was removed.

Not only were opium products found in indoor air samples, but the concentrations were extremely high.

This suggests that, as happens with secondhand cigarette smoke, contaminated indoor air and surfaces pose a serious risk to children’s health.

The extent of health problems in children as a result of such exposure is not known. What is known is that the number of adult drug users has increased from 920,000 in 2005 to over 1.5 million in 2010, according to Zalmai Afzali, spokesman for the Ministry of Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan. A quarter of those users are thought to be women and children.

If current trends continue, Afghanistan could become the world’s top drug-using nation on a per capita basis.

According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), no other country in the world produces as much heroin, opium and hashish as Afghanistan, a sad distinction for a country already ravaged by war. Control efforts so far have concentrated on poppy eradication and interdiction to stem exports. Less attention has been paid to the rising domestic addiction problem among children.

Among the factors leading to increased levels of drug use in adults are the high unemployment rate throughout the country, social upheavals caused by the war and those that preceded it, and the return of refugees from Iran and Pakistan who became addicts while abroad. In both of those countries, the high number of opium-addicted children is also a serious problem, particularly among street children.

Although Iran’s government has opened several shelters for street children in Tehran, many more centers are needed to care for them.

According to some estimates, there are 35,000 to 50,000 children in that city who are forced by their parents or other adults to live and beg in the streets or to work in sweat shops for very low wages.

These children are subject to all kinds of abuse. Many of them end up in organized prostitution rings as part of the sex trade. Children are often transported to other countries where they are obliged to work as prostitutes, while others simply disappear.

In Karachi alone, where tens of thousands of children are addicted to hashish, children addicted to stronger drugs present other problems. The increasing number of street children has led to more street crime as children become involved in drug trafficking in the city.

Those who inject drugs face the additional risk of HIV-infection by sharing contaminated syringes. “Drug addiction and HIV/AIDS are, together, Afghanistan’s silent tsunami,” declared Tariq Suliman, director of Nejat’s rehabilitation center for the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.

The distinction between producing and consuming countries has now changed.

“Traditionally consuming countries become producers of synthetic drugs. In turn, producing countries become consumers. What remains is a shared international responsibility. No country should be left on its own this way,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the UNODC country representative.

There are about 90 drug treatment centers dispersed throughout Afghanistan, but most are small, poorly staffed and underfunded. The United States and its allies have the resources to rapidly expand and adequately fund such treatment and rehab centers throughout the country.

The great number of opium-addicted children in Afghanistan is one of the darkest legacies of this ill-fated war.

 

“My Gun Was As Tall As Me” – Voices Of Child Soldiers

300.000 is the estimated number of children under the age of 18 currently  serving as child soldiers in 30 countries around the world.

 

Daughters of the brothel

WRITTEN BY: Ashly Bloxon

INDIA. — Home to about 10,000 women and children, Chaturbhuj-sthan is a brothel in Bihar, near the border of Northern India. Historians believe it was first established during the Moghul era.

Prostitution has become a family tradition in Chaturbhuj-sthan, passed down from generation to generation.

After reading Jugnu, a 32-page monthly magazine written and published by the sex workers of the Chaturbhuj-sthan brothel, filmmaker Gautam Singh contacted the magazine.

The magazine had been created by a group of sex laborers, led by a girl named Naseema.

Born into Chaturbhuj-sthan, Naseema was abandoned by her mother and raised by a woman she calls her ‘grandmother’. Her ‘grandmother’ decided use the money she earned as a prostitute to raise Naseema and send her to school,  Naseema soon became the first girl in the brothel’s 300 year history to receive an education.

When Naseema returned to Chaturbhuj-sthan it was not to sell her body. With the help of local banks, Naseema established several small industries inside the brothel creating alternative forms of employment for the sex workers.

Naseema also sought to persuade the sex workers to send their children to school, now nearly every child in Chaturbhuj-sthan is receiving an education.

Over 50 former prostitutes now work with Naseema in her local endeavors as well as the maintenance of the magazine, which is sold across India. Naseema and the other women work to prevent others being trafficked, mainly from neighboring Nepal and Bangladesh, in the last year alone they have been able to send at least 20 new girls safely back home.

The former prostitutes have many enemies, and the work is extremely dangerous. Rani Begum,the chief of the brothel, has suffered a blow  financially as a result of Naseema’s activities. Her thugs have publicly harassed and beaten Naseema and the other women who work with her on numerous occasions. The former sex workers have also had to fight pimps, as well as some police officers and clerics.

This film chronicles the story of the former sex workers and the Chaturbhuj-sthan brothel.

 

For India Rape Victim’s Family, Many Layers of Loss

By Heather Timmons 

MEDAWARA KALAN, India — The village of Medawara Kalan lies down a one-lane dirt track, past mustard fields, thatched-roof huts and piles of neatly stacked cow dung patties, dried to use for fuel.

Thirty years ago, Badri Nath Singh left this village for the capital city, New Delhi, 600 miles away, one of millions from the vast Indian countryside to migrate to the fast-growing cities.

Last month, Mr. Singh and his family returned, bearing the ashes of his only daughter.

His daughter, 23, who died after being gang-raped and attacked with a metal rod on a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 16, has become a symbol of all that is wrong with how India treats its women and girls. But until December, she had been an example of something very different: of how far ambition, hard work and parental love can remove one generation from the rural poverty that is the lot of most of India’s 1.2 billion people.

“This episode has shattered my dreams,” Mr. Singh said in an interview this week in the village in Uttar Pradesh State. He sat outdoors wrapped in blankets on a rope and wood cot, while an ever-shifting crowd of male relatives sat watchfully nearby, sometimes passing scalding cups of chai.

Mr. Singh, his wife and two teenage sons returned to Medawara Kalan, population 2,000, after his daughter’s death on Dec. 29, to perform 13 days of Hindu rituals that culminate in men’s shaving their heads and providing a meal for hundreds of people, meant to bring peace to the dead.

Little has changed in the village since Mr. Singh left, even as development spreads to the far corners of India. Electricity is scarce, farming is the only occupation, and the government school ends at fifth grade.

“At the village we could not fulfill our needs, so it was inevitable to move out,” Mr. Singh said about the decision to leave three decades ago. Although his daughter was born in New Delhi, she returned often to the village with the family, just as many urban Indians still maintain ties to a family village.

With his move to New Delhi, Mr. Singh was in the first wave of a slow shift that is transforming India from the agrarian land of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who said India “lives in its villages,” to a country of teeming megacities. In 1991, India had 23 cities with more than one million people. By 2011, it had more than 50.

Mr. Singh’s first salary in the city was about $4 a month, but he soon saved enough to have his wife, Asha, join him the city, and then to buy land and build a small home. While girls are not always prized in India, Mr. Singh and his wife lavished attention on their firstborn, a daughter, he recalled. “Whether it’s a girl or a boy, it’s God’s gift,” he said.

The daughter — whose name is being withheld because it is illegal to name a rape victim in India without permission from the victim or her next of kin — showed as a very young girl a love for school, her father remembered. “She used to cry if she couldn’t go to school,” he said.

She was often the best in her class, he said. The education of girls is often overlooked in India in favor of boys, but the Singhs did the opposite with their daughter. “We gave much more attention to the girl” than to the two sons who came after, he said.

“If my sons asked for money, maybe I would refuse, but if my daughter asked for money, I never refused,” he said, putting his arm around his son Gaurav, who stood protectively nearby. He even jokingly called her “beta,” Hindi for son.

Together, they discussed how she might advance further than even their most accomplished relative, a judge. She wished to become a doctor, but because money was tight, she chose physiotherapy and enrolled in a school in Dehra Dun, a major city in the north.

To pay for school, Mr. Singh sold most of the land he owned in Medawara Kalan, borrowed money from family members and worked double shifts, 16 hours a day, loading luggage at the New Delhi airport.

The woman had planned to pay for her two younger brothers’ education once she started her career. One boy hoped to be an engineer, the other an astronaut.

Read more: http://omaymen.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/gang-rape-on-bus-angers-indians/

 

Trouble in Russia Over Ban of Adoptions by Americans

By: Ellen Barry

MOSCOW — The moratorium on the adoption of Russian children by Americans, which began as a fight between two countries, began this week to look like a fight between Russians and themselves.

On Friday, opponents of the law were preparing for a demonstration on Sunday condemning legislators who had voted for the ban — organizers were calling it the “March Against Scoundrels” — and a top official at the governing party, United Russia, lashed out with unusual vitriol. Opposition “hysteria” over the adoption ban was useful, in a way, the official, Andrei Isayev, wrote on the party’s Web site, because it created a vivid distinction between patriotic Russians and others whom he witheringly called “citizens of the world.”

“All the enemies of Russian sovereignty have revealed themselves as ardent supporters of American adoption,” wrote Mr. Isayev, who sits on the party’s general council, adding that on Sunday, “the latter will go out to march for the right of unrestricted export of Russian children to America.”

“Let’s look attentively and remember the faces of the organizers and active participants of this march,” he wrote, calling Sunday’s event a “March of Child Sellers.” “Our task in the coming years is to drive them to the farthest edge of political and public life, to the middle of nowhere.”

President Vladimir Putin approved the adoption ban last month, in retaliation for a new American law aimed at punishing human rights abuses in Russia. In 2011, about 1,000 Russian children were adopted by Americans, more than residents of any other foreign country, but still a tiny number given the nearly 120,000 children in Russia who are eligible for adoption.

Anger over the ban may not be enough to reinvigorate a protest movement in Russia that has flagged recently, when it became clear the rewards would be meager and the punishments harsh. But the reaction is deepening a rift that began to open last year, after Mr. Putin decided to address himself to a conservative, loyal electorate in the hinterlands, turning away from the prosperous urbanites who were drawn to anti government rallies.

“The country is really dividing,” said Lev D. Gudkov, director of the Levada Center, a Moscow-based polling agency. Two-thirds of Russia’s population, he said, lives in villages and small towns where people get their information from television, which often reports that American parents are never punished for abusing children adopted from Russia. Polling by the Public Opinion Fund in late December showed that 56 percent of respondents approved of the ban.

The rest are city dwellers who increasingly graze the Internet for news, and are less and less dependent on the government. That group lurched back to life after its long winter holiday and mobilized against the ban. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta has gathered 130,000 signatures in favor of revoking the law; on Thursday it announced 100,000 signatures on a petition in favor of dissolving Parliament.

All week, prominent entertainers have been promoting Sunday’s march by posting video clips online in which they explain — often emotionally — why they are opposed to banning adoption by Americans.

“It’s a horrible story.,” said Liya Akhedzhakova an actress beloved for Soviet-era comedies. “The most defenseless, unwanted children who are not quite healthy when they are born — they are not needed by anyone.”

Tatyana Dogileva, another actress, practically spat out her words about politicians. “They play their cruel, dirty games, and this is their business. But why do they get children involved in it?”

She went on to address Alina Kabayeva, a gymnast who now sits in Parliament and who years ago was rumored to be Mr. Putin’s mistress. “Alina, why did you vote for this law?” Ms. Dogileva said. “Aren’t you sorry for these children, these specific children? They will die there, Alina.”

Yevgeny S. Gontmakher, a social scientist, said Mr. Putin had made a gamble not unlike the one he made by arresting the oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky in 2004: Russian elites might disapprove, but they would get used to it, and a vast part of the electorate would not care much.

But he said the Kremlin would eventually suffer for the ban.

“In the long-term perspective, it is of course a loss, because there is 25 or 30 percent of society that has formed the opinion, because of these orphans, that politics has become immoral,” Mr. Gontmakher said. “It’s clear that a certain break has taken place inside these people. They may not say so during a public opinion poll, because there are elements of fear. But for these people the government has lost the last remains of its moral authority.”

 

Tears of Gaza

Disturbing, powerful and emotionally devastating, Tears of Gaza is less a conventional documentary than a record–presented with minimal gloss – of the 2008 to 2009 bombing of Gaza by the Israeli military. Photographed by several Palestinian cameramen both during and after the offensive, this powerful film by director Vibeke Løkkeberg focuses on the impact of the attacks on the civilian population. Tears of Gaza makes no overriding speeches or analyses.

The situation leading up to the incursion is never mentioned.

 

All children deserve a beautiful childhood

Source: DNA Mumbai  

Sixty-five years after Independence, millions of Indian children are yet to be freed from the bondage of malnutrition, child labour, lack of education and child abuse. Their wait to enjoy their childhood and realize their full potential seems to be getting longer with every passing anniversary of our Independence.

A look at where our children stand today leaves much to be desired. We cannot even claim to have provided bare minimum food, education and protection for millions of children during all these years of freedom. Unfortunately, the issues do not seem to figure as high on the national agenda as they should.

After 65 years of freedom, child malnutrition has assumed epidemic proportions. Almost every second child in India faces some level of malnourishment. Almost 40 per cent of Indian children are underweight, and 45 per cent are stunted due to malnourishment, according to the National Family Health Survey-3. The survey also reported that six out of every 10 children from the poorest households are stunted, and almost as many are underweight. Children from the SC and ST communities are also more likely to be malnourished, according to this report. The ministry of health and family welfare states that more than 55 per cent of the under-5 mortality occurs from complications resulting from malnutrition.

Neither has enough been done to make life easier for children who somehow survive malnutrition. They work in factories, handling hazardous chemicals, losing their childhood even before having a glimpse of it. Many are employed for household work in our cities and towns.

According to the NSSO’s 66th round survey (2009-10), there are 49.84 lakh child laborers across the country. About 13.3 per cent of children in the 10-18 age group are employed or engaged in some income earning activity. Of these, 42 per cent comprised casual wage workers and another 42 per cent were unpaid helpers in household enterprises.

Fortunately, millions of children now manage to go to school, thanks to the implementation of the Right to Education Act and several other schemes by government agencies and civil society. But ironically, this has led to more challenges.

Going to school may not be the most pleasant experience for a child in India. In fact, it is a nightmare especially if a child belongs to a marginalized section of the society.

Imagine children staying in school for eight hours without even a drop of drinking water, no toilets and in crowded classrooms where teachers teach two different classes of 80 to 100 students each. The growing number of enrollments which brings a smile to our faces doesn’t reveal these aspects.

 

Gang-rape on bus angers Indians

The hours-long gang-rape and near-fatal beating of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi has triggered outrage and anger across India. People in the country are demanding action from authorities who have long ignored persistent violence and harassment against women.

Groups of student activists on Wednesday protested against sexual harassment that women face while using public transport. Throughout the day demonstrations clogged the streets in front of New Delhi’s police headquarters, near Parliament and outside a major

Police said six men raped the woman and savagely beat her and her male companion with iron rods on a bus driving around the city.

So far, four men have been arrested and a search was underway for the other two. The victim is in a critical condition with severe internal injuries and her companion is also being treated at the hospital.

 

Slavery in the Chocolate Industry

 

None Of Us Are Free – If One Of Us Is Chained

“I love you, my brother, whoever you are – whether you worship in a church, kneel in your temple, or pray in your mosque. “ – Kahlil Gibran

None Of Us Are Free – If One Of Us Is Chained

And there are people still in darkness,

And they just can’t see the light.

If you don’t say it’s wrong then that says it right.
We got try to feel for each other, let our brother’s know that we care.