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Around the world, children are being pushed further into poverty due to wars, conflict and the climate crisis. The increasing devastation we are witnessing unfold goes against our shared humanity.
Habiba (8) was killed when Israeli airstrikes hit her home in Gaza in October 2023. Photo: Trócaire
The sheer brutality of the violence and trauma unleashed against innocent children today will remain one of the great tragedies that haunts our generation.
Every single day, we watch on our phones and TVs as children around the world are falling victim to the brutality of war, conflict and climate change. Within minutes of an airstrike or a flash flood, images and videos of children pleading for help arrives into our homes, a pain so unbearable we can no longer pretend not to see it.
We looked on in horror and disbelief as live footage showed 28 tiny, premature babies being evacuated from Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital as Israel continued its attacks. We watched again as more than 5,000 children were killed in Gaza in less than two months.
Habiba (8) is one of the 5,000 children who lost her life to the war on Gaza. She was sitting at home painting and watching the news with her family when she was killed by Israeli airstrikes that hit her home in Gaza City.
Read More: ‘She was carrying a colouring brush, not a weapon’ – Stories of the children of Gaza
“Habiba was in third class and she was so clever,” Habiba’s mother Feda’a says. “She wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. They killed her dreams and they deprived me from enjoying the light of my beautiful moon.”
“Please stop all of this. The piece of my heart Habiba has gone and I don’t want more mothers to go through what I am going through,” Feda’a says. “Please stop these massacres against the children of Gaza.”
More than 450 million children worldwide are living in areas affected by armed conflict. An estimated one billion children are at ‘extremely high risk’ of the impacts of the climate crisis.
The stats cannot do justice to the moral depravity on display nor can it capture the stark suffering of the children who have shared their stories with us at Trócaire.
Machot (12) was forced to flee his home in Yirol East, South Sudan after conflict broke out. Photo: Trócaire
Machot (12) was forced to flee his home after violence broke out in his village in South Sudan. Machot, his parents and his four young siblings, lost their home and their farm and with them, the ability to provide themselves with food, shelter and a future. The family now live in a shared room at a community centre in South Sudan and gather ground nuts in order to survive.
A complex balance between conflict and climate change has left South Sudan consistently ranking among the world’s hungriest countries. After a famine in 2017, the country is now once again facing similar conditions due to renewed violence, as well as the worst flooding in almost 60 years, and lack of rain.
Despite losing everything, Machot shows his childhood innocence, saying the thing he wishes for the most, is to have one friend with whom he can play in his new village.
“At home, we would gather all the boys and play ‘mud splash’ until it was time for dinner,” Machot says. “I just wish to get a friend who we can stay together as best friends.”
More than 1,000 kilometres away in Ethiopia, Yordanos (15) and her five siblings were forced to flee their home in north-western Ethiopia when war broke out in 2020. The family now struggle to survive in a new village, where hunger is rife.
Read More: Children displaced by war in Ethiopia want to return home this Christmas
Yordanos (right) was displaced by the conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia. Pictured with her sister, she lives with her parents and her siblings in the Mekelle Health Centre IDP camp where they have received support from Trócaire partner Daughters of Charity. Photo: Trócaire.
The conflict in Ethiopia combined with drought in some of Ethiopia’s regions have resulted in nearly 31.4 million people in need in Ethiopia – including 16.5 million children.
Like many children affected by the war, Yordanos has missed out on three years of her education.
“Life in the camp is very difficult,” Yordanos says. “There is hunger.”
“We used to have better living conditions back at home but now it has changed. We are living poorly. I hope to get educated and to be an engineer. I want to go back home and live peacefully.”
Olena with her toys at a Caritas shelter in Ukraine. Photo: Caritas Ukraine/Trócaire
In a shelter in Ukraine, Olena closes her eyes in her mother Anna’s arms as she sings her softly to sleep.
Anna doesn’t sing about twinkling stars. She sings reminders to Olena that she is now safe from the deadly missiles that once flew over her home in southern Ukraine.
“Sleep. You are safe,” Anna sings. “The black birds of war will no longer fly in your dream. Your childhood will no longer limited by the rule of ‘two walls’ or bomb shelter. Your toys will no longer live under the bed. Sleep, my little one… You will no longer be afraid of loud noises and crouch down in the middle of the road out of fear, because deadly missiles will never fly over you again. I want to believe it. I want it more than anything for you.”
For children like Olena, memories of the brutal war in Ukraine are never far away. Half of the population – an estimated 17.6 million people – are still in need of life-saving assistance.
Ineza Umuhoza Grace, Founder and CEO of Trócaire partner ‘The Green Protector’ Photo: Mark Stedman/Trócaire
Ineza Umuhoza Grace remembers the trauma of her mother desperately reaching her from her bed as floods engulfed her childhood bedroom in Rwanda.
“When I was five, I was sleeping peacefully and I was woken by my mother to find my room had turned into a lake. The next thing I knew, my home was gone,” Ineza says.
Rwanda is one of the countries in the world that will be most affected by climate change, despite doing the least to cause it. Flooding and landslides are becoming more common, eroding lands and destroying entire villages. More than 65 percent of Rwanda’s population is employed in agriculture, making the effects of climate change all the more devastating.
“People think climate change is a thing that will affect us in the future. I can tell you; it has already happened to me. I get the same fear as I did that night when I see the floods in Somalia, in Pakistan, in Europe,” Ineza says.
“Climate Change will continue to affect the children of this world. We need to act now so we can offer a tangible hope to this generation and the next.”
Around the world, children are being pushed further into poverty due to wars, conflict and the climate crisis. The increasing devastation we are witnessing unfold goes against our shared humanity.
The violence and trauma unleashed against innocent children will remain one of the great tragedies that haunts our generation. But our generation is not one that is destined to stand on the sidelines and ignore the brutal images of children pleading with us for help.
We can act. We must act.
We see their images and pleas. We do not look away, but we can show them solidarity by lining our streets with protests. We can challenge and overturn the structures that allows innocent children to suffer. We can sign petitions, calling on our elected representatives to demand ceasefires and to commit real funding to climate change funds. We can donate to charities who are on the ground helping children to survive.
We can unite in our desire to protect children, because they deserve the right to expect that we will act with the urgency and robustness for which they so desperately plead.
