My granddaughters reveled in a spring break filled with family time, jumping on the backyard trampoline, playing on their pedal scooters, foot races in the front yard on dry grass, and watching NCAA basketball with their parents. A trip to the zoo topped off a welcome break from the classroom. All of this despite some windblown days.
They were born in a free country. With devoted parents. The girls attend a good school with caring teachers. Their church is supportive and present. Their extended family is close by and numerous, nurturing generational connections.
They are loved. They are safe. They are lucky.
In 2025, children their ages in South Sudan have never known peace. Girls especially are targeted, at risk of assaults and atrocities that will forever leave them traumatized.
In 2025, children their ages in Gaza and the kibbutz locations in Israel have lived the past 17 months with horrific conflict, rubble their playground and death their companion.
In 2025, Ukrainian little ones the same ages as my babies know the drill to seek shelter. Their homes and their schools are intentional targets, collateral damage inflicted as siblings and classmates are victims of the bombs or drone attacks.
In 2025, an ongoing international conflict in Yemen has kept children like Lillie and Ellie from going to a zoo. Or to school. That war has also kept them from food.
UNICEF’s website writes about the fallout in the small country on the southern Arabian Peninsula.
“The ongoing humanitarian crisis has increased the vulnerability of children and women to exploitation, violence and abuse, child labour, killing and maiming, recruitment and use of children by parties to the conflict as combatants… around 17 million people are food insecure, 4.7 million of them at crisis levels. The damage and closure of schools and hospitals has also disrupted access to education and health services. More than 4.5 million children of school age do not attend schools.”
UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, was established in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II.
“Our mandate was clear: to help children and young people whose lives and futures were at risk – no matter what role their country had played in the war.”
Bob Dylan wrote his thought-provoking “Blowin’ in the Wind” in 1962. The echoes of that anthem are just as relevant today.
I so wish that the winds of change would end the wars, the hate, and the injustices for all the children of the world, the same ones we sing about in Sunday School.
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West Texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
