Children caught up in warfare

Children have always been the most vulnerable group in wars. When adults start a war, children have no choice but to experience, at minimum, the same horrors as their parents. As Wednesday marks International Children's Day, we tell three stories about children and war.

A Job

Mohammed is a skinny, cheerful nine-year-old, and he has an important job, according to the staff who work in the Lagkadikia Camp, which located in the north of Athens and provides accommodation for nearly 900 Syrian refugees.

"We got many Mohammeds here, but he is the best one," a worker at the camp said in English.

Even though he did not understand English, Mohammed knew the worker was praising him, so he smiled appropriately.

Mohammed helped the staff in the camp sort out meal tickets, a job he took seriously. Breakfast tickets went into one pile, lunch tickets to another and then supper tickets. When he counted the tickets, he did so in Greek, having learned to count to 30 in the language.

After the bloody conflict engulfed Aleppo -- Mohammed's home town -- his family was forced to embark a long and toilsome exodus, moving from one place to another seeking sanctuary. Throughout the years before they arrived in Greece, Mohammed had never been able to attend school or receive any qualified education.

It is estimated that about 22,000 of the 55,000 Syrian refugees in Greece are children. On average time, these children have been out of school for 18 months.

Asked about his life at the camp, Mohammed said there were many snakes lurking about, but he isn't afraid of them.

"I used to keep one snake as my pet," he said.

A Dream

"My dream is simple. It's improving this poor place," Ibrahim al-Nemnem said. The 13-year-old Palestinian boy wants to one day be an engineer to improve the living conditions in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.

The camp, with a population of approximately 82,000, is the most overcrowded refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

"We thought the camp is supposed to be a temporary residence, but it seems we might live here for decades. That is why I want to renovate my poor camp," Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim says the longstanding conflict in Palestine has deprived him of all his rights. He wants to play with his friends in a garden or in a playground, but the camp is too crowd for that. Should he become an engineer, he wants to create a playground.

Most children share similar thoughts with Ibrahim, wanting to become teachers and doctors to help improve their habitats. Ibrahim is lucky enough to have his family's support to stay in school.

But dreams can be fragile. Save the Children, a non-governmental organization dedicated to children's welfare, estimates that 551 children in Gaza were killed, 3,436 injured and about 1,500 children lost their parents in 2014.

Mahmoud Zidan, a 16-year-old boy also from the Shati camp, is not as lucky as Ibrahim. His dream of becoming a teacher was shattered three months ago because he had to quit school and find a job to support his family.

"Life does not have to be about unemployment and poverty," said Mahmoud, who now works as a fisherman. "We can do more."

A Video call

Sergeant Tang Shaoluo stayed up the whole night tossing and turning on his bed until morning. The Chinese soldier waited anxiously at the camp of the Chinese medical peacekeeping center in Monrovia, capital of Liberia, for a call from China.

Thousands of miles away Tang's wife was delivering their son. Around seven o'clock in the morning, when Tang heard the first cry of his son through a telephone line from China, he was actually calmer than he thought. But tears still streamed down his face.

When Tang saw his son's tiny face on his cellphone, he fell in love with him immediately. Tang wanted to be at his beloved wife's side, holding his son's warm little fingers.

But he could not.

Tang, together with the other soldiers at the camp, arrived at Liberia in September 2015 to take part in the peacekeeping mission in this west African country. Before departure, he learned that his wife was pregnant, but he decided to carry on with the mission.

In Liberia, Tang was helping with casualty evacuation and transporting doctors to local villages. Whenever he was off-duty, he would call his wife, who went through plenty of difficulty during the early stages of her pregnancy. He felt guilty for not being by her side.

"We will return to our home country in one month. I'm already imagining the scene when I embrace my son and my wife," he said.

"Before going back to China, I will do my best to fulfill my duties here in Liberia," the soldier added.

While his son is far too young to understand the significance of his father's work, Tang hopes to one day tell his son that he was away trying to make the world a better place for other, less fortunate children.

As we celebrate the Children's Day and strive to protect the rights of children, we should also keep in mind that brutal conflicts create new challenges. The world should spare no effort to protect innocent souls from the terror of war.

"Yet I keep them (faith), because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

These words were written by Anne Frank more than 70 years ago, who died in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of 15. To prevent the same tragedy from happening again, and to let our children keep their faith in humanity, we must all act now.

(APD)