Stressors on Children

Racism was experienced by my husbands aunt. She lives next door to us right now. As a child she was raised as black but her parents were: Father-black, mother-black and Native American. She is very light complected and looks white. She said the teacher used to call on her and the kids would say, she just calling on you because you look white. That's why you get called on. The kids picked on her and too this day she still has a complex about people telling her she looks white. She is in her 70's now. This happened when she was in Elementary school. We occasionally see the people who taunted her when we walk on the track at the school in the morning and she still has ill feelings toward them. when she talks about them you can hear the built up feelings in her voice. I'm so glad that our nation is waking up and being aware of bullying and trying to do something about it. It has lasting effects on people. I chose to see what Iraqi people are doing about the effects of war on the children.
Every month in Iraq, according to the 1996 UNICEF report, more than 4,500 children under the age of five die from hunger. The children are the most vulnerable in this war. Twenty-three percent of all children in Iraq have stunted growth, approximately twice the percentage before the war. A 1995 FAO report Crop and Nutrition Status Assessment Mission states that child mortality level in Iraq has risen nearly fivefold since 1990. Alarming food shortages are causing irreparable damage to an entire generation of children. Due to the use of depleted uranium (a form of nuclear warfare) in the military campaign against the people of Iraq, there has been a dramatic increase in childhood cancers, particularly leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, and lymphomas. Congenital diseases and deformities in the fetuses-a condition similar to the babies of the Gulf War veterans-have also increased. Infant mortality in a child's first year is expected to reach an unprecedented 20%. More than 2 million children are starving to death in Iraq, and more than 1,500,000 orphans are crying out for help.
In Hamrin, Task Force Liberty soldiers distributed school supplies and toys to the town's children. In all, over 10 boxes of pens, pencils, notebooks, coloring books, crayons and toys were collected by the soldiers, with the help of their families back home, and distributed to children ages 3 to 14. The supplies were gifts from the people of the United States to the children of Hamrin, the soldiers told the children and their families. There isn't a lot of attention being paid to these children individually. I'm sure there are many who are depressed and I read that many of the children have nightmares.