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Features >> February 22

Child victim of armed conflicts
By A Kuber Singh

Manipur has been facing a volatile social order due to armed conflicts and communal clashes during the last decade. In these situations the child population suffers most. The child requires other's protection and care and at the same time  cannot find ways and means for survival at this stage. Such a young child has no problem even if circumstances under which he survives do not favor it and to him any situation is not knowledgeable. But for the grown-up child, those above 8 years of age, everything is knowledgeable and so his problems will increase from time to time.

In temporary camps set up for providing relief services to the affected population they do not have proper health care facility and the innocent children population under 5 years of age suffer from many diseases and infections and at least 30% of them die because of inadequate medical care and treatment.

The camps put-up by donors, NGOs and village leaders are much crowded and the situations are found unhygienic. The conditions of the camps give rise to limit
the movement of the small children:
- No place to play and no warm clothes to protect them from cold weather of the
winter season. 
Health condition of the children:
-No supplementary feeding was possible since relief materials were insufficient.
- Water and sanitation problem exist in every camp, and therefore water-born
diseases had to be controlled.
-Immunized children under 5 years and all other minor health problems were dealt
with by medical doctors.

Schools have to be started in the camp areas on the normal pattern to impart
education to the children from nursery to Class X or XII and such institutions
are manned by persons of the respective camps who possess higher degree, say the undergraduates. The reading and learning materials are supplied free by NGOs. Moreover other needs like clothing and supplementary food for students as well as the cost of running the school are to be taken care by the NGOs. So, staying in temporary camps for about 2-3 months is easier for the children to survive due to availability of relief materials. 

More difficult days followed when the families will move to new settlement areas. 
More than 90% of the children have to earn their livelihood by engaging themselves in unskilled occupations like rack-picking, opening vendors, working in hotels and restaurants as cleaners, selling cinema tickets through black-marketing, cleaning vehicles etc. In all these kinds of work, middlemen are there to exploit them to the maximum. In addition to this, nobody thinks about their mental problems such as providing counseling and mental support services to single parent child/orphan to console him/her to accept their fate and also to show empathetic attitude to the child for removing his suspicion by extending love and care.

The grown up children under 10 years of age told the NGO workers the horror of
human catastrophy - the mutilated bodies as a result of gunshot and bomb blast,
horrifying scene of burning houses and charred bodies of the domestic animals.
Incidents took place so suddenly that counselors and psychologists or psychiatrists were required to bring back the mental conditions of the children to normalcy. The problems come across by workers/volunteers of the relief camps are:
- Trauma caused due to uncertainty in life.
- Fear psychosis due to memory of the fearful incidents.
- Sense of helplessness and insecurity due to lack of confidence and because of
conflict situation, which may occur any time.
- Looking for protection and care from somebody other than their parents (if living).
- Psychosomatic conditions leading to serious disorders.
- Revengeful attitude and extremist in behavior.
- Self-destructive attitude.

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To the surprise of the relief workers, about 10% of the boys above 10 years of
age were found addicted to various substances like narcotic drug, alcohol,
smoking, abuse of dendrite as intoxicant etc. and also are seen having
behavioral problems like delinquency and criminal attitude. The adolescent
girls suffer from inadequate living environment like shortage of space in the
camp sites and hesitation because of non-availability of space required for
privacy etc. The adolescent girls are found anemic because of inadequate intake
of food, absence of proper medical care and also from professional hazards.

Cases of sexual abuse of the adolescent girls were also reported, some of them
being subjected to child prostitution. The girl child does not get adequate care
and attention of the parents and other family members. But the situation is such
that all the migrant families live there in the camp as one family, and therefore, they have to bear with different situations which involve people having different behaviors, such as drunkards, gamblers, males indulging in sexual promiscuity, dishonest persons creating problems with everybody etc. The conflict-affected families live in such sad conditions.

In the matter of organizing for education and the rehabilitation of the children
the Government Committee for Restoration of Peace and Normalcy Manipur (CRN), the CASA and the Rajiv Foundation, New Delhi extended valuable support. The United NGO Mission Manipur (UNMM), the Fraternal Green Cross (FGC), Imphal and other NGOs provided all possible services to the affected persons. Two children homes run by the Leprosy Patients Welfare Society and the Meitei Marup Imphal accommodate in their respective institutions only 60 children as against 7,000 affected children.

The fact is that a conflict situation may occur in our society at any point of time
and anywhere in the world because of terrorism, armed revolution, poverty and
leadership crisis. So, in such situations, to protect our young children, the
Government has to have proper schemes like that of the SOS children village
project and the members of NGOs should acquire proper skills for organizing
programs for physical, mental and social rehabilitation of the affected children. In the absence of this policy, the child victim later turns out to be a drug addict or a person suffering from AIDS, a criminal, a commercial sex worker as we see in Manipur after 10 years of occurrence of the unfortunate events. We don't know how long such situation will prevail.

(This article is the last piece of the writer who was the founder executive
member of All Manipur NGO Forum he passed away on February 10, 2002 at 5:30 pm)

(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)