CHAIRMAIN NAIDOO: Suffer the little children (that means you, Trump!)

A few months ago, my favourite cousin (“A”)and I had a spirited conversation about the parenting skills of some of the younger members of our extended family. It must be noted that my cousin and I are child-free, having made a separate, similar, decision more than three decades ago not to be encumbered with offspring.

We were, we said — a little hollowly, if I think back on it now — fighting the brave fight against our ticking-time-bomb biological clocks. We called it a good cause, helping keep the world’s population down.

We were, we said, on a career trajectory that demanded our full attention and we could not stop to breastfeed. Pah!

A and I laughed, then, that we would rather have Prada shoes and holidays on the French Riviera than pay dentist bills or meet the eye-watering price of private education. Not that we have had no children in our lives. I am Godmother to, and in regular contact with, half a dozen smart, funny, interesting, wise young men and women.

A has always been an engaged “goddess aunt” (her phrase for her generous, over-indulgent self) to a host of nieces and nephews who adore her.

Children are, mostly (at least they are in the circles I move in) respected and treated with great love and tolerance and compassion

Our conversation from a few months ago had a whimsical air to it. We both allowed ourselves the luxury of a little regret at our early choices. We wistfully wondered what it would have been like to have had our own children then, before it got misty-eyed, turned the talk to A’s 16-year-old Godchild, whose birthday it was.

The teenager has absolutely everything going for her. Good nutrition has seen her grow several centimetres taller than her parents; an excellent dermatologist has banished painful teenage acne; the best private school has ensured she is spectacularly well educated; international travel has exposed her to “The Other” — other cultures, other worlds, other views, other opinions.

Community service (working in an old age home), first enforced, then volunteered by herself, has increased her levels of empathy so she’s actually a nice human being with great emotional intelligence. Her parents, A and I concluded, had literally become her willing slaves — carting and carrying and organising extramural activities and special maths lessons, and piano and tennis. This single child ruled the roost.

My cousin A laughed when I said our niece was spoilt, reminding me that this, in the main, is how middle-class Indian families raise their children: “Like Maharajas and Maharanis!”

Children are, mostly (at least they are in the circles I move in) respected and treated with great love and tolerance and compassion. Depending on the financial circumstance of the family, they are pushed to achieve. Parents are often prepared to make sacrifices to improve their children’s lives, and their experience of life in general. My parents did.

Like the beautiful teenage girl I am now watching grow to womanhood, I grew up in an environment that was protected and protective. I lived in a home — and a community — where I was encouraged to be the best I could be. I was given help along the way: material help, emotional help and spiritual help.

I had the luxury of freedom from hunger, relief from pain. I had the luxury of education, and books and the ability to express my opinion. Remember, I am saying all this even though I was born in, and lived through, the dark years of apartheid. Regardless, my life seemed to be safe.

And so it should be for all children.

Trump vs the children

Nelson Mandela, in June 1995, famously said: “Our children are the rock on which our future will be built, our greatest asset as a nation. They will be the leaders of our country, the creators of our national wealth who care for and protect our people.”

Someone should send that to US President Donald Trump whose disregard for children will be the hallmark of his failed presidency.

A and I talked again this week, this time grateful for our childlessness, relieved at not having children in this crazed environment that is so cruel to children. Our world, it seems, has gone mad and children are being treated with the kind of inhumanity outlined in Charles Dickens’s workhouse novels.

The Trump representative in court also thought it was acceptable that the children be denied access to soap and toothbrushes

I will forever keep in my mind the harrowing photograph published this week of the Salvadoran migrant and his baby daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande at the US–Mexico border. Oscar Alberto Martinez was seeking asylum in the US; he’d wanted to give his two-year-old daughter Angie Valeria a better life.

What Trump — who blames the asylum seeker for trying to leave his country of origin — seems not to understand is that no father would willingly endanger his child’s life unless hopelessness was bigger than the threat of that danger. And so it must have been with Oscar who was willing to risk everything. His and his daughter’s drowning has become part of the political debate over Trump’s asylum politics.

The Democrats blame the Republicans for harsh and inhumane methods used to keep immigrants out. The Republicans say the Democrat’s super-liberalism has encouraged people escaping poverty-stricken, crime-ridden countries to embark on the dangerous journey to the US.

Just days ago, the Trump administration went to court to argue that it should be able to force detained migrant children to sleep on concrete floors. The Trump representative in court also thought it was acceptable that the children be denied access to soap and toothbrushes.

Meanwhile, Trump went to the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan determined to pick a fight with India (he wants that country to reverse its new tarriffs on US imports) and with China (he’s threatened to impose more tariffs on the country). In an incendiary tweet, he claimed that the Chinese economy was tanking.

In the face of such ego, how can we expect the leader of the free world to care about the plight of refugee children? How can we even hope that he will introduce and implement laws that protect them, unconditionally?

Unicef: 2018

10 refugee children facts:

As of 2016, 28-million or one in 80 children in the world were living in forced displacement — this includes 12-million child refugees and child asylum seekers, and 16-million children living in internal displacement due to conflict and violence. 115,000 people are displaced every day within African countries.
Between 2005 and 2015, the number of child refugees worldwide, under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’s mandate, more than doubled from 4-million to 9-million.
Around nine out of 10 refugees remain in their region of origin as of 2016.
In 2014, 28% of all detected trafficking victims were children (20% girls and 8% boys).
At least 300,000 unaccompanied and separated children who moved across borders were registered in 80 countries in 2015 and 2016.
Worldwide, there have been more than 26,000 migrant deaths since 2014. In 2016, there were an estimated 700 child deaths on the Central Mediterranean route alone.
Around the world, almost one in 10 children live in countries and areas affected by armed conflicts, and more than 400-million live in extreme poverty.
Over 100 countries are known to detain children in immigration detention.
Refugee children are five times more likely to be out of school than other children. Only 50% of refugee children are enrolled in primary school, and less than 25% of refugee adolescents are enrolled in secondary school.
An adolescent boy from Sub-Saharan Africa with secondary education and travelling in a group along the Central Mediterranean route, faces a 73% risk of being exploited, while the risk for a boy from another region drops to 38%.