Editor's Comment - Joni Hillman

Welcome to the summer edition of the Development in Action online newsletter. This edition is themed around children – some of the principle beneficiaries of development initiatives and a sector of the population of the South that remains of utmost importance, both because they represent the best hope for achieving some of the goals for the future that the international community has set out, and because they remain vulnerable and often defenceless in the face of the many problems facing the world.

Children are often the victims of the many violent struggles that rage throughout the world. In an era of changing styles of conflict, civilians are frequently targeted, used as pawns in the complex and protracted games that pass for modern warfare. Paul Gunstensen examines the brutal and commonplace phenomenon of child soldiering, weighing up the differences between children forced into military service by the barrel of a gun, and those for whom fighting represents a simple economic decision – a guarantee of food and shelter. Some of you may have seen the recent BBC documentary, ‘One Day of War’, which followed individuals in conflicts across the globe. Muktar, a 14-year-old Somali boy, freelanced for the various militias in Mogadishu for the princely sum of $1 or $2 a day, revealing that in an environment as chaotic and uncertain as Somalia, becoming a child soldier provides one of the few chances to earn enough to feed, clothe and shelter an orphan like Muktar.

In an era when human rights are allegedly at the fore of international policy-making, particularly in the light of the Abu Ghraib scandal, young girls all over the developing world have their rights to freely enter into marriage of their own volition and to have the opportunity for an education violated on a frighteningly large scale by being forced into marriage before they are even teenagers. The health implications of this widespread practice are catastrophic, leading to higher rates of both infant and maternal mortality, and the physical complications that arise for girls who start families before their bodies are sufficiently mature. Much research points to later marriage and motherhood as a key factor in the struggle to reduce high birth rates, particularly in a country as desperately over-populated as India. Later marriage also allows women to remain in education, which in turn makes them better and more informed wives and mothers. Yet, despite this logic, in a society where a daughter is seen as a burden or even a curse, child marriage continues unabated.

Finally, Ruth Bergan reflects on some personal and emotional experiences of child sponsorship at an orphanage in Pondicherry, describing first-hand how damaging this can be and the pitfalls involved in the seemingly innocuous practice of helping children through school.

Joni Hillman, Editor

For more information about ‘One Day of War’ and Muktar’s story see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/programmes/this_world/one_day_of_war/html/16.stm