Unfortunately, for many years, the apocalyptic words of Leonard Cohen have been ringing in my head:
I’ve seen The Future, brother. It is murder.
I fear that we have yet to show him to be wrong.
Cohen went on: things are going to slide, in all directions. There won’t be nothing you can measure anymore.
I imagine the future is indeed likely to be off the scales. With immeasurable fear, torment and misery among most of our children for decades to come. Suffering that we cannot measure anymore.
Already, we cannot measure the pain of war-and-climate-displaced, refugee, abused, occupied, exploited and enslaved children, to mention just some. All those who are victims of cruel governance. Nor can we measure the depths of moral failure of very powerful men (almost always men), who countenance, enable and generate this suffering. Who enjoy their sunny islands while their bureaucrats deny children the minimum social and economic protections needed to keep from hunger, disease and cold – even in countries disposing of wealth unheard of in human history.
Who sit by, with arms folded and minds empty of concern. Who hide behind the empty slogan of ‘”sovereignty” and use it as shield, when abuse of children is everyone’s business.
I think these are the folks we should be asking, not just the good folks of the UNICEF family.
Put them in a room, one by one, alone, for an hour, and have them write on paper, how they are preparing for the future of the world’s children. Start with each of the Heads of State or Government of the Security Council. And the CEOs of the Fortune 10 companies. Let us see their best answers.
I would like to ask us all a further question: why do we as adults care so little about other peoples’ children, in comparison with our own? And why do almost all our leaders place the well-being of children, and the future of children, at the margins of their political projects, instead of at the centre? Including those who claim to be concerned about the ‘future of our country’!
Leonard Cohen also sang, in The Future, that: “Love is the only engine of survival”.
You can find Love at the heart of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child - and in the 1924 League of Nations Declaration on the same. Because they take each young human life as precious, deserving and requiring of unconditional attention and respect. And insist that those born helpless into this world should be born into protection and care, not into a global zip code lottery of violence.
But, isn’t it a pity, isn’t it a shame? For no leaders, no governments, now take their CRC seriously, let alone their obligations thereunder. They don’t get thrown out of school for trampling on its articles. They are not marked ‘Fail’ for cheapening the beautiful idea we have conceived – that children have inherent rights, that adults, especially those with power and money, have moral duties to children.
And the Committee that tries to hold them even minimally to account, that takes such good advice from UNICEF and Save the Children, is now the target of their efforts to dilute and defund its scrutiny.
Of course, this is no way to love our children. And without loving children, on their own terms, there can be no survival, only disgrace and degradation.
Perhaps we should say that, as long as there are UNICEF, Save the Children and the others like them, working and speaking out with some degree of independence, there is room for hope. But can we honestly conclude in optimism, despite these points of light? The shadows of dictatorship, aggressive nationalism, kleptocracy, cynicism, war-making and ecological vandalism are far too dark for optimism to be an honest appraisal of The Future. We are heading back to where we were, for most of human history, back to when we could not even imagine children’s rights. We are still the same destructive species – but now with awesome weaponry and technology. We have not shown ourselves worthy of our children yet.
For they are going to be fortunate to survive, let alone live free from fear. That is, unless we most rapidly design new arrangements for global accountability to children. The UN has been a very fine idea, utterly necessary – but far from sufficient. Its Members have recently declared, in most cases with the deepest cynicism, that they want “a more just, sustainable and peaceful world, where no one is left behind” (A/RES/75/1). Leaders call once more for change, but fail again to demonstrate that they themselves are changing.
After 75 years of predominantly unjust, unsustainable, violent and unaccountable governance, which has left vast numbers behind (the one-third malnourished, for a start), our children’s crises now demand something with far greater reach and range. Global and local arrangements that will put those who claim to lead, back into that little room, and have them answer the question, what future do you intend for my children and for yours’? And then subject them to questioning by the children they have so far betrayed.
The next time UNICEF manages to stage some kind of World Summit for Children, it might consider making this a part of the event. We hear incessantly from leaders; children now require their turn (and in ways much more meaningful than we saw in Glasgow). As for the Formal Session, have the Heads of State and their paymasters sit and listen to children speaking for a day. Let children teach us a better future than the one we have laid in store for them.
Imagine all the people, living life in peace: we have a million miles to go, and we are already so late in starting. The Nations need to be unified in and for the love of children.
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That is where I thought I had concluded this Lamentation. But then I saw a talk on YouTube by the late Christopher Hitchens, where he argues that there is something more important, more attainable, and in some sense more powerful than Love. And that is Justice. Which brings us back to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, its Committee, its mandatory standards of treatment that every child must experience, and the principles – including of universality, non-discrimination and best interests – by which these standards must be applied. I wonder now how children can be sure of love, when they are not also the subjects of justice: full citizens of just global and local societies. Climate justice. Generational justice. Family Love and Basic Services may guarantee a child’s survival. But only with Societal Justice, which - with our planet in escalating crisis and humanity mired in grotesque inequalities - requires Global Justice, can a child born somewhere today expect a future worth living.
Leonard Cohen: The Future
This article is part of the XUNICEF News and Views Quarterly Newsletter, December 2021.
Yes, you and Leonard Cohen are right: the sky is cloudy, the sea is rough and the tide is against us. How terrible it is. But that's exactly why we have to go on, not relent, not give in. No concesions.
ReplyDeleteEver wondered why so many poor people living in terrible conditions are able to have a very strong sense of humour?