Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103240121
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
The aid organizations are sending personnel to the region to determine the true numbers and provide urgent help to the children of war. And they are asking for donations.
"This is an emergency situation and will require immediate concentrated action on the part of the United Nations system," said World Health Organization Director-General Hiroshi Nakajima.
The Geneva-based organization said last week that more than 30,000 Iraqi civilians, including numbers of injured children, launched an exodus from war-ravaged Iraq to southern Iran.
WHO said more than 2,100 refugees, mostly women and children, arrived during one day alone while the director-general was visiting ill-equipped border camps. Nakajima saw one child with burns that refugees said were the result of fighting.
He called for medicine, water-purification equipment and other supplies.
Western relief officials fear there may be tens upon tens of thousands of child victims in the region, although no figures are yet available.
They include a 2-month-old Iraqi baby that was brought to a U.S. military checkpoint in southern Iraq, dead of malnutrition; and a girl on a Kuwaiti street corner with a sign pleading, "Where is my father?"
In Iraq, officials say the situation appears particularly desperate.
A United Nations report said Iraqis may face epidemics and famine unless the country gets an infusion of aid, amid fighting raging between rebels and government forces in both north and south.
The report by Undersecretary-General Martti Ahtisaari, which the Security Council received on Thursday, said "most means of modern life support" were destroyed in the Gulf War.
Ahtisaari, who wrapped up a weeklong visit last Sunday, said supplies of flour, sugar, rice and vegetable oil were critically low, and powdered milk was being given only to sick children.
"It is unmistakable that the Iraqi people may soon face a further imminent catastrophe . . . if massive life-supporting needs are not met," the report said. "Time is short."
Lisa Mullins of InterAction, a coalition of U.S.-based relief agencies, said insurrection in Iraq does not bode well for its children: "Given the political instability in Iraq, I think things are going to get worse before they get better. I don't think we've seen everything yet."
In Kuwait, however, relief workers are beginning to assess the needs of children orphaned, crippled and traumatized by Iraqi occupation and subsequent war.
"Many children had seen bodies either hanging from lampposts or dumped in their neighborhood," said Dr. James Garbarino, a child development expert who visited Kuwait in early March on behalf of UNICEF.
"Many children experienced the loss of a close relative due to death or kidnapping," he said in a telephone interview. "More than half the children described what appears to be the psychological effects of trauma."
Garbarino, who spoke with dozens of Kuwaiti children, cited the case of a 12-year-old boy whose father was taken from their car by the Iraqis. He said the boy will likely suffer continuing trauma.
He also cited the boy who saw a cousin killed while playing with a grenade, and a 12-year-old girl who demonstrated the crouch a neighborhood woman took before the Iraqis put a bullet in her head.
Garbarino, president of Chicago's Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development, said many youngsters will need counseling and that a network of teachers, counselors and social workers should be set up.
Among relief agencies entering Kuwait, AmeriCares recently sent doctors. The American Red Cross flew in its first shipment of tents, baby formula and other relief supplies as part of a $1 million package.
The Christian Children's Fund, based in Richmond, Va., which has individual sponsors helping more than 500,000 needy children in 28 countries, is also studying the needs of child victims, among other private agencies.
Kenneth Phillips, president of Plan International USA, suggested individuals could help by sponsoring children, not just in the Gulf region but an estimated 6.5 million child war victims worldwide.
"The frustration in a situation like this," Phillips said, "is that these kids in Iraq and Kuwait are really suffering."
by CNB