Children of War: The Heaviest Coffins

Who pays the price for the simultaneous wars ravaging continents, while state leaders make grandiose claims about the necessity of invasion - justified by wounded pride and hollow nationalism?

Does it matter that countries bankroll wars, secretly or overtly? Does it matter that the price of war is not actually monetary?

Yes, history is written by the victor. But will it matter that the pages bear the names of those who seized land or those who sent others to die on the frontlines?

And when the dust settles, who is left to celebrate the so-called victory? What does it mean to win, when the cost is counted in corpses?

What is the value of a human life compared to jets and tanks worth millions, blown to pieces in seconds? Infinitely more.

They say the tiniest coffins are the heaviest. This International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression, it should be remembered that defenceless children, babies, are the easiest to kill and hardest to grieve.

As desensitization sets in, wars and targeted violence have peaked globally. Be it civil unrest in Sudan or invasion in Ukraine or religious violence in Myanmar or cross-border escalation in Kashmir or war in Palestine.

Today, almost 19 per cent of the world’s children — that’s over 473 million — are living in conflict zones, as per UNICEF. Of them, 47.2 million have already been displaced by war and violence. This percentage has almost doubled since the 1990s.

 In North Darfur, Sudan, a third of children now live under famine conditions. 457,000 children are acutely malnourished and nearly 146,000 are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

 In Haiti, reports of sexual violence against children have increased by 1,000 per cent in 2024.

As war raged in Ukraine, at least 2,406 children have been killed or injured. That translates to 16 children killed or injured every week.

In 카지노 Magazine’s 26 December 2022 issue ‘Ukraine War’ are the words of Kateryna Kalytko.

“They won’t compose any songs, because the children of their children,

Hearing about this initiation, will jump out of their beds at 4 am

By the echoes of their spinal cords. Separate parts of death

Cannot form a whole: a quarter of fate or of body is always missing.”

As war raged in Ukraine, the country’s poets became its journalists.

In 카지노 Magazine's 'The Silence of Kashmir' issue, dated June 11, 2024, Naseem Shafaie wrote ‘A Soundless City’

“In the cypress branches was born a cuckoo bird.

Born she was, and grew she did in the shade of

the shadows, enjoying the warmth of her mother’s

bosom, and just nobody knew.

A day came when she learnt to hop, learning to hop”

‘The Ugly Face Of War That Casualty Numbers Don’t Reveal’ recounts horrors in Vietnam over four decades after the United States lost the war.

 “The people from that village over there,” they tell me, naming the village, “birth children with severe defects generation after generation.” Vijay Prashad wrote in 카지노 Magazine’s 11 January 2025 issue titled ‘War and Peace’.

Even the children who survive the violence are left with fractured lives - their schools are shut, routines erased and any sense of normalcy is lost. 

“After the recent tensions along the border and LoC, for several days the school remained closed; it is only now that full class work has begun,” said a school teacher Gulnaz Neer, in Shell-Shocked and Sleepless. The story was a part of 카지노 Magazine’s 11 June 2025 issue, ‘Living On The Edge’

In the end, the questions remain unanswered. What is it all for? Wars are said to be fought for the glory of the future, but what good is the future when it is paved by the blood of children.