From Your Editors, week 15-21 April 2024

This week Gautam Banerji describes his artistic journey.  As Gautam so aptly says, he is guiding us along his path to the infinite, and I would add into creativity's infinite possibilities.

Gautam concludes with a quote from Tennyson’s “Ulysses”,  one among my preferred poems:

“We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” Alfred Lord Tennyson: Ulysses

Catherine Russell recently visited the OPT and Israel and released a statement saying "Children do not start wars, and they cannot end them, but they always pay the highest price. For the sake of every child, I urge the parties to the conflict to release all Israeli hostages, implement an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and facilitate unfettered humanitarian access, and refrain from any further violence against children."

We feel powerless - Staggering figures are released almost daily reminding us that the situation of children in Gaza, the West Bank, Ukraine and the Sudan is far worse than we, as former UNICEF staff, ever experienced. These figures are a call to recover our humanity and our collective obligation to do everything in our power to protect the lives of children.  See Tess Ingram's video on Instagram

Photography is there to document life. These days, and far too often, to document moments of death and unbearable tragedy.  This photo of  a Palestinian mother clutching the lifeless body of her child is going to haunt us for years if not for generations to come. 

On the softer side   Ms Girija Devi reports of a Indo-Japanese XUNICEF Mini-Reunion, in Tokyo on 22 March 2024 and of meeting Eimi Watanabe, Kazuo Inoue and  Yoshi Uramoto. 

Passover  We wish all who are celebrating the holidays next week a Happy Passover.

To take it from Gautam, I would to end this week editorial with another quote from Lord Tennyson's Ulysses 

“How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
  To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!”

 

This week's editor, Gianni Murzi