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Correspondents' Journal

February 16, 2004

Suffer the little children
(Click images to enlarge)

The house we visited was small and run-down. The kerosene space heaters-carried from room to room-barely touched the chill of mid-winter Baghdad. Upstairs, two rooms served as both bedrooms and playrooms for the children: girls in one, boys in the other. Thin blankets on the floor had to substitute for beds and sitting mats for the eleven children who presently live here.

Despite the sparse, bleak conditions, everything is relative in Baghdad. If you've had to make your home in the streets-or a corner of a bombed-out building or a tent in the middle of a rubble-strewn former military base-then four walls, a roof, and a real floor can mean a major improvement.

Sisters Marwa (7), Zahra (6), and Hawra (4) sit with their friend Miriam (10) on the mats that serve for both play and sleeping.

This is only one of the homes for street children that have sprung up around Baghdad in the past several months. "Street children" is a broad term. It encompasses orphans who fled the state-run orphanages where (in some cases) they were abused and tortured. It also includes children who have taken to the streets because of family situations and economics.

More Iraqis fall into poverty

UNICEF reported before the last war that more than 50 percent of Iraqi families were living below the poverty level, and that children were increasingly being forced to work to help support families. This trend continues, as each day we see more children on the streets working as peddlers or beggars. The number of people with no homes, forced to live as squatters in abandoned, burnt-out, and bombed-out buildings is more than 70,000 in Baghdad alone.

With an estimated 50-to-70 percent of the workforce unemployed and many others underemployed, the number of urban poor is immense. This includes many families who have maintained a roof of some sort over their heads, but just barely.

Children's pictures speak loudly

Children explain their pictures to AFSC's Mary Trotochaud.

The first time we visited this small home, I sat on a blanket on the floor surrounded by children. Breaking through the language barrier and the shyness of strangers, each child, age four to twelve, told me what their favorite animal was. Through giggles and hoots of laughter, we imitated the sounds of the animals as we repeated their names in English and Arabic. Promising to see them soon, we left the children some construction paper and pencils. A week later, when we returned, they presented us with their pictures.

by Miriam, age 10	by Rawa, age 12

Children's art often reflects how they see and feel about the world around them better than words. Again, the children and I sat on the floor and discussed the pictures they had drawn for me. The pictures of women in beautiful dresses were typical for girls of this age. But Rawa and Mariam's women had tears in their eyes and running down their cheeks. Their mother had been blinded by the regime's warfare attacks in Kurdistan.

Tent life by Karrar	and by Zahra

Several of the children drew houses, date palm trees, mosques, and a river with boats and fisherman, accurately reflecting the landscape of Baghdad. But Karrar and Zahra's pictures had tents instead of houses, reflecting the landscape of their lives. They had been living in tents at one of the homeless camps, on the grounds of a previous military base.

The most jarring picture showed two tanks, one Iraqi and one American, shooting at each other in the midst of the houses and trees and river and mosque. Haider, the ten-year-old artist, had been found on the streets yelling at the American troops.

A bleak future appears inevitable

Umar, age 9, said he was too sad to draw.

The eleven children at this home are off the streets-for now. The lease at this house is temporary and the people who run the house are volunteers, working without pay and providing money for operations out of their own pockets. Like many Iraqis, they grapple with the many problems facing this beleaguered country with no resources and few systems to help. Wars.sanctions.dictatorship.and, now, occupation have degraded the children's lives and their futures.

It is said that if you want to know the health of a society, look at the lives of the most vulnerable. Children under age fifteen comprise more than half of Iraq 's population of 24 million people. These are the most vulnerable. They are also Iraq 's future.

Children of the house show their approval of new beds, provided by AFSC.

AFSC gave a measure of relief to the children of this home by providing clothes, shoes, kerosene heaters, fuel, mattresses, and beds. A small amount of food was also provided.

- Mary Trotochaud

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