Hidden Children Research Articles

Children at Risk

C hildren are at risk in every part of the world today. They are at risk because of their special vulnerability as children and because the “natural” urge of most adults to protect and care for children falls far short of ensuring their protection and care. Children are particularly at risk when they are separated from their parents and families due to war, poverty, and oppression, or when their caregivers have themselves become their exploiters and persecutors. According to UNICEF’s most recent State of the World’s Children report, an estimated twenty-seven thousand children under five died of preventable causes per day in 2001. Jo Becker, Director of Human Rights Watch, states that “children are at risk of violence in nearly every aspect of their lives—in their schools, on the street, at work, in institutions, and in areas of armed conflict. They are beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted, and murdered, often by the very individuals responsible for their care and safety.” The community and the state have often been reluctant to intervene to protect children. Paternalistic concepts of children as property—chattels of their parents, or extensions of their parents—rather than as persons in their own right are deeply ingrained. The recognized need to protect the private sphere of personal and family relations from undue state interference is another barrier. But gradually we have come to recognize basic human rights of all children and to enshrine these rights in international treaties and conventions, such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the most widely ratified of international human rights conventions. Almost all children have some ability to express their needs, from the infant crying to express hunger or cold, to the nineyear-old refugee from Sierra Leone who approaches a Guinean woman and asks her to take him with her because he has no one else to care for him, or the teenage refugee in Canada who recognizes the injustice and humiliation of being a “brownpaper” person because of her lack of immigration status. But having a voice is one thing, having the power to escape from oppression and persecution is another. Children lack power in our society and are therefore dependent upon adults to recognize their needs and act to ensure their care and development, as well as their safety and protection. In this issue of Refuge we have an opportunity to examine what is happening in different parts of the world to the most vulnerable members of the world community. The essay “Hidden Children” by Moller and Minard describes the situation of separated refugee children from Sierra Leone who are being fostered by families in neighbouring Guinea. This can be compared, ironically, to the predicament of children who have reached the “golden mountain” of the United States, only to find themselves imprisoned in the “care” of the INS while their status is adjudicated. It is not surprising to discover that the attention lavished on little Elian Gonzalez, the shipwrecked six-year-old from Cuba, is far from typical. As Morton and Young point out in their piece, in the year 2000, while the battle for Elian raged in the media, “the INS took nearly five thousand children into its custody, some as young as eighteen months old.” Closer to home, Denov and Campbell reveal the ravages of internal displacement on a community and the grievous toll taken on its children. In their searing account of the Innu people of Davis Inlet, we learn that the Innu, who have twice been relocated by the Canadian government, are the “most suicide-ridden people in the world” and that “an Innu child is between three and seven times more likely to die before the age of five than the average Canadian child.” Internal displacement occurs worldwide. In the report by Mahalingam, Narayan, and van der Velde, we gain insight into effective strategies developed by UNICEF for working with IDP children in a range of different countries, from Sri Lanka to Colombia, strategies that include empowering adolescent youth in refugee camps to becoming involved in

Children Under The Nazi Yoke

ABSTRACT. This paper deals with the effect of persecution on children during the Holocaust. The psychic consequences discussed pertain to the Nazis’assault on the children's bodies, on their ego, their superego and their identity. A brief section summarises problems of psychotherapy for child survivors and the last part deals with the consequences of Nazi ideology on the superego of Germans.Starvation and other forms of interference with the functioning of the body deplete narcissism and destroy the will to live. Ways of rekindling of narcissism and enhancing the will to live are discussed.The effect of persecution on the ego is manifold. The restriction of space with the ensuing inability to move freely, the breaking down of the children's sense of gravity with the ensuing inability to stand up or stretch, the loss of the sense of time, all represented an infringement on basic ego functions, acquired during early development. Outstanding among their defences were numbing of affect, splitting and identification with the aggressor or frustrator. However, child survivors developed an amazing ability to adapt to new and stressful circumstances.The effect of the lawlessness on the superego was especially difficult for young children and adolescents. Previously acquired rules had to be abandoned and a new set of rules had to be learned, rules which sanctified stealing as means of survival. Happily, after the return of adult guidance with their own ethical values restored, children and especially adolescents rebuilt their shattered and altered superego.The most outstanding effect of persecution was the loss of one's identity, the loss of feeling of being worthwhile and an imposition of a new religion on hidden children, who had to disavow their Jewishness to survive.The persecution of non‐Jewish children differed from the assault on the Jewish children's identity. Jews were destined to die while others were either enslaved, made to conform or even chosen to be Germanized. Many Jewish children in hiding were raised in the spirit of Christian teachings which blamed the Jews for killing the Saviour. Treatment should aim at helping the Jewish child‐survivors to regain confidence in their own memories and to raise their shattered self‐esteem.Lastly a short section deals with the way Nazis brought up their own children and distorted their superego. Grandiosity and taking advantage of the Jews to project their own guilt on them fostered lawlessness. It is suggested that the Nazis hated their own children whom they sent to war and killed when they were handicapped. This hatred was repressed and projected upon Jews. The Jews may have been chosen as scapegoats because they developed ethics which prohibited child sacrifice and thus rescued children from death, a tenet incompatible with an ideology that advocates child killing.

Paediatric report launched.

The 'Hidden Children' report on the paediatric ward attender system has been officially launched at RCN headquarters. The report has been produced on behalf of a number of organisations, including the RCN and the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital. Lady Jean Lovell-Davis, the Director of NAWCH is pictured seated, with; (from left) Yvonne Mouncer, Deputy Director, National Association of Health Authorities; Jean Rigby, Unit General Manager, paediatrics, Birmingham Children's Hospital; Rosemary Thornes; Roderick MacFaul, and Sue Burr, the RCN Adviser in Peadiatrics.

Education for socio-culturally exceptional children. Stowaways on board?

In some quarters, these children are seen simply as the victims of accidents or handicaps to whom nature has been unkind. Yet neither they nor their parents are the fatal sufferers of blind destiny. They represent the hidden face of a society that we ourselves have built. They are the hidden children of a society whose present organisation and projected changes concern only recognised citizens. The latter, however, seem never to have widened their vision, their thoughts, their institutions and their struggles to include, from the very start and as of right, those children. 3 The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the organisation for which he works.