{"id":84211,"date":"2016-12-12T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T12:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=84211"},"modified":"2016-12-10T14:13:35","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T14:13:35","slug":"human-rights-day-a-call-to-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/12\/human-rights-day-a-call-to-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights Day: A Call to Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>December 10th\u00a0marks the U.N. Human Rights Day, celebrating and upholding the indispensable and crucial declaration of universal human rights. On the eve of this event, I visited\u00a0a refugee camp housing 700 families in Kabul. Conditions in refugee camps can be deplorable, intolerable. Here, the situation is best described as surreal. As I approach the entrance to the camp with my friends Nematullah, Zarghuna and Henrietta, we are overcome by the stench emanating from an open sewer filled with filth. I ask myself, “Can this be real?”<\/p>\n

Inside the camp, primitive mud huts are separated by narrow walkways.\u00a0When the\u00a0inevitable\u00a0snow comes, the ground inside and outside\u00a0the homes will be muddy until the mud freezes.\u00a0 Plastic\u00a0has been placed over some of the doors and roofs, in hopes of providing insulation from the coming cold.\u00a0Mothers in the camp tell us winter months are unbearably hard.\u00a0Children become sick at the\u00a0onset of winter and they don\u2019t recover until spring arrives. People burn plastic, boots, clothing, and water bottles for fuel, but when those resources\u00a0are depleted, they rely\u00a0solely\u00a0on heavy blankets to protect them from the cold.<\/p>\n

A single\u00a0water pump serves all 700 families, and the water isn\u2019t\u00a0even potable.\u00a0 It\u00a0needs to\u00a0be boiled for 20 minutes\u00a0before use.<\/p>\n

Latrines\u00a0here\u00a0are the \u201ctraditional type,\u201d\u00a0simple\u00a0holes dug in the ground.<\/p>\n

Our visit was arranged by\u00a0Nematullah,\u00a0an\u00a0Afghan Peace Volunteer. A\u00a0friend of his\u00a0teaches informal language and math classes to\u00a0children at the camp.\u00a0Nematullah\u00a0leaned over and asked me to jot down the rights listed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights.\u00a0I quickly scribbled food, water, shelter, health care, employment\u00a0and security in my notebook. As we listened to the mothers describe their daily lives, we checked off the rights\u00a0they have been\u00a0denied.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome\u00a0days we get food from the market if our children work there,\u201d said Nazar Bibi. \u201cThey bring back potatoes or turnips. Otherwise we eat bread and tea. Sometimes we have no tea, and sometimes we don\u2019t even have bread.\u201d<\/p>\n

We were told,<\/p>\n

“If someone becomes sick there is no clinic, no first aid. And we have no hospitals nearby that will help us. We can\u2019t afford to travel to hospitals that might accept us.\u00a0 (Six hospitals serving \u201cbetter off\u201d people are within walking distance of the camp, but none of them accept the camp residents, who have no means to pay hospital bills, as patients.)<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t want to send our children to work on the streets. We\u2019re afraid they\u2019ll be hit by a car or blown up by a suicide bomber. But we are desperate for food and fuel and there is no work for men and women here in the camp. Sometimes the children return home and there is no bread for them.\u00a0 They wake up after\u00a0midnight, begging for food because they are so hungry, and there is nothing for them.”<\/p>\n

“If we had education, perhaps we wouldn\u2019t be here,\u201d said Nazar Bibi. \u201cWe want our children to learn, but even government schools cost money. We have no income.”<\/p>\n

One woman managed to laugh. \u201cWe don\u2019t even know what a dollar looks like!\u00a0 What color is it? Is it black, or white?\u201d said Shukria. \u201cIf America sends dollars here, we never see them. No one cares about us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The women said they do feel secure within the camp. They can go to the latrine without being harassed.<\/p>\n

Shojun and her family are relieved to have escaped\u00a0the\u00a0fighting in Kunduz. She described nightmare experiences\u00a0with\u00a0bullets\u00a0flying\u00a0back and forth over and through her house.\u00a0After fleeing in haste they\u00a0realized\u00a0one of the seven children was still in the house.\u00a0 Fortunately, he was saved. She and her family arrived in Kabul with no belongings,\u00a0only\u00a0themselves.<\/p>\n

Shukria, who fled fighting in the Laghman province, showed us the large raw scar tissue covering her inner, upper arm.\u00a0 The Taliban killed her husband 12 years ago.\u00a0 She\u00a0then\u00a0married his brother, but two years ago, during renewed fighting between the Taliban and government forces, their home was attacked.\u00a0 Her husband lost\u00a0a\u00a0foot. He then left\u00a0the province, abandoning her and her two children.\u00a0 Shukria says that sometimes she\u00a0considers suicide but then\u00a0thinks of the two children.\u00a0Today, she has no food to serve them lunch. Shukria\u00a0herself\u00a0is painfully thin.\u00a0 She shakes her head, and adds because she never has shampoo she washes her hair with detergent and she thinks it\u2019s causing her hair to fall out.<\/p>\n

Up to the end of 2014,\u00a0<\/em>the U.S. had spent more money for \u2018reconstruction\u2019 in Afghanistan than was allotted for the Marshall Plan<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>( more than two-thirds of this had gone to build up Afghan military and police forces), yet Afghans remain one of the poorest people in the world.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the U.S. Congress has authorized\u00a0$618.7 billion for the\u00a0National Defense Authorization Act,<\/a> to fund the Department of Defense in 2017.\u00a0Even a fraction of this budget, directed toward human needs, would solve the problem of starving children worldwide as well as meet the needs of the destitute people living in the\u00a0camps throughout Afghanistan. It would be fitting on this\u00a0December 10th, U.N Human Rights Day, if the citizens of the US were to extend a hand of true friendship to those in need throughout the world and make meeting the needs of the world’s least fortunate the first priority. True security for the US will be achieved through caring for and respecting the world’s most needy, not through the rampages of war and destruction that has made the US the most feared country in the world.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Kathy Kelly (<\/em>Kathy@vcnv.org<\/em><\/a>) writes for <\/em>PeaceVoice<\/em><\/a> and co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (<\/em>www.vcnv.org<\/em><\/a>)<\/em> When in Afghanistan, she is a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers (<\/em>ourjournetytosmile.com<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 10th marks the U.N. Human Rights Day, celebrating and upholding the indispensable and crucial declaration of universal human rights. On the eve of this event, I visited a refugee camp housing 700 families in Kabul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}