This year, on the anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, we have no choice but to speak of the impossible childhood of Gaza. Beyond the necessary political discourse, we must continue to discover and feel the dehumanization of a world, our world, in which a child must beg for their life.
Despite the solidarity that has grown in recent months against genocide, I have the experience that, with Gaza, all children are once again the losers, continuing to lose importance in our adult lives. Despite the criticisms we make, we fail to make clear the basic principle that the Convention obliges us to defend: there is no circumstance, no situation, no context in which adults can kill children. None. Not even the excuse of collateral damage is valid with children. Every action that destroys a childhood is inhumane, a grave crime, an infamy that dehumanizes both those who order it and those who fail to prevent it. There are no nuances, and we shouldn't even look for them to try to understand what's happening.
I say that childhood has once again lost out because accepting its distant demise means that, in our immediate surroundings, childhood is also valued somewhat less, more easily relegated to the background. It may seem that impoverishing it, forgetting to be there for children and facilitate experiences of serenity and happiness, respecting their rights, etc., are very relative issues compared to the tragedy in Gaza. We easily forget that here and there, they have the right to exist, but also the right to a childhood. Their tragedy cannot overshadow our own.
It's worth remembering that, here, not all children can be children. Childhood varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. Many people believe that not everyone is part of the childhood of Catalonia. Born here, educated here, trying to be from here, they are still experienced as outsiders. Segregated neighborhoods, segregated schools, segregated childhoods. Not all childhoods are worth the same, nor can they all aspire to a future. I've said it many times: if we keep one in three children in economic poverty, we're not just committing an injustice, we're committing an illegal act.
We return, however, to thinking about the boys and girls there to qualify our solidarity, to avoid the benevolent notions that make us feel good when they buy a ticket on some flight. fatThinking about their impossible lives in Gaza will help us consider how, here and there, we make it possible for them to have a life.
It's painful, but let's take a moment to reflect on the meaning of their existence. They are forced to be children in lives where, day in and day out, bombs are constantly falling, the adults are running around desperately, and it's impossible to explain to the child, in total and permanent bewilderment, what is happening and why. They want to live, but they are beginning to feel that life isn't worth living.
The few remaining healthcare resources in Gaza have had to create a label for the Wounded Child Without Surviving Family (WCNSF). These are children, always wounded, psychologically or physically, who are alone. In the midst of destruction, they have survived because they have to live without being able to explain their lives to anyone.
To be a child is to be able to imagine realities, to be able to learn, to be able to play. What happens when all of this is permanently impossible? What kind of human beings are being shaped by this existence?
What is the human condition of the adults who create this reality and maintain it as a possible and acceptable one? I cannot consider someone who generates the destruction of childhood to be human. I don't think about them. I think about all the European rulers and powers who refuse to look, who know but refuse to acknowledge, and who, at no point, consider their obligation to care for children first and foremost, starting with those in Gaza, which is also their responsibility.
I return to the childhood here and the one beyond, a single childhood. I try to remember and recall other writings: "There is no dignified childhood [I wrote some time ago speaking of poverty] without feeling loved enough, without knowing that someone will always be there for you and that your life is not pure fragility, without discovering that your opinions, your experiences, your views also matter, without being able to smile rather than cry, without having more smiles than tears, a worried father so that you think about playing with him. To live like this is to live without the right to childhood." Childhood destroyed in Gaza and flooded here.
