God helps those who...

...help others!

Turn the world's wisdom on it's ear and remake yourself. Use your self and resources to help others; lay down your life that another might live, and find God as your partner.

Selah.

The plight of India’s children

Two recent reports have come out of India related to children’s issues and intervention: one report deals with the ongoing problem of Indian girls, and the other report details widespread lack of nourishment among Indian children. These reports give a bit more context to the resistance that caregivers face in providing care to these at risk children. The same cultural dynamics that place Indian children at risk also resist the care options for these children, especially girls…

A cry of girls at risk

The first article is somewhat hopeful, as India's central government tacitly acknowledges a deep problem. It plans a serious of “cradle orphanages,” where unwanted baby girls can be raised – hoping to stem the tide of widespread female feticide. Research shows that more than 10 million Indian girls have been killed in the last two decades, via abortion and infanticide.

Renuka Chowdhury, the minister of state for women and child development, has taken this issue to heart. She notes that female feticide is producing an alarming imbalance between males and females, and hopes to offer a solution. Thankfully, Renuka is outspoken on this issue, and we can only pray for others to follow her lead.

The last line in the Detroit News article states the underlying issue: destruction of girls “stems from the low value attached to females in Indian society.”

It is a deadly serious issue. India’s Hindu culture struggles with the results of its own prejudice, and now faces a painful truth: Any society that devalues its girls devalues itself.

A story of malnourished children

A second article details figures from India's National Family Health Survey, showing that nearly half of India’s children are malnourished. This puts India, now the most populous country, ‘in the same league as some of the world’s poorest countries.’

India has made dramatic strides on the world stage, enjoying a technological and economic boom – and yet these economic gains are not being matched by ‘equal improvements in the health of its more than one billion people.’

This is staggering to think about, really – that a country with more than one billion people exists with half of its children malnourished. The numbers are numbing.

Werner Schultink of UNICEF concludes that India should be worried: “It’s going to be difficult for India if it wants to use its human resources to develop the nation but does not make [human] improvements.”

A chance to make a difference

Behind both of these reports lurks an underlying societal brokenness – the war on India’s children, its girls and outcastes, is a war that starts in the mind and works its way into the streets – a terrible reality.

It’s interesting that the people invested in assisting orphans and unwanted Indian children are often the same people rejected by traditional Hindu power brokers. In light of India's great orphan need, consider how Hopegivers orphanages have been treated this last year! Consider how Sam Thomas and other caregivers have been attacked, their lives threatened and ruined for trying to help the same children that others do not want! The children unfed, unclothed and outcaste, the girls devalued and thrown away… these poor girls are offered care, and yet those who give them care are viciously attacked by entrenched Hindutva leaders!

Herein is the crux of the problem. I pray that Renuka Chowdhury and the other appointed ministers of India will not overlook systemic issues, and not overlook the amazing resources already in place for helping these girls. Already there are orphanages in place, places of education and care, staffed with loving, sacrificial people… if only these orphanages could be protected from the onslaughts of entrenched traditional militants!

Here also is a path for us to help. We can do something, by supporting Hopegivers orphanages – places of light and hope for India’s children…

The sacrifices of Dr. Sam and M.A. Thomas, and the intrepid caregivers of Emmanuel Hope Home, and others in India, are not in vain.

And our gifts are not in vain, providing moments of light and salvation! Please give something today, if you can... God bless your heart and actions!

Selah.

A prayer for raped mothers and babies

Suad Abdalaziz, 28, who was raped and became pregnant
during a attack by the janjaweed in the village of Tawila,
holds her 3-day-old baby girl.
David P. Gilkey, Detroit Free Press

Sudan girls victimized
“If she doesn't marry she may become a prostitute…”

One of the most devastating aspects of the Darfur genocide is the fact that janjaweed gangsters and their Arab backers are using rape as a weapon of ethnic cleansing. The defenseless Sudan men are killed and their young women are raped, left to bear children – children forever branded, raised by stigmatized mothers.

It is a shame/honor culture in which rape devalues the girls’ worth. Not only must they now carry a forced child, but do so in a society that then devalues both child and mother. It is heartbreaking, on all levels.

Sudarsan Raghavan, a Detroit Free Press correspondent, gives an on-site account…from Abu Shouk, Sudan.

ABU SHOUK, Sudan - There were no smiles, no blessings at the birth of the light-skinned girl with the ebony eyes and curly black hair. Not a glimpse of joy. For a family still bleeding from war, the baby was like salt on their wounds.

"My father didn't speak for the entire day," recalled her mother, Suad Abdalaziz, 28, her voice cracking and her face streaming with tears. "He was not angry at me. He was angry at the janjaweed and the government for giving me this baby."

In the troubled province of Darfur, pro-government Arab militias called the janjaweed have raped countless black African women in a campaign that the Bush administration has called genocide.

Now, their babies are emerging across this tableau of human suffering. They are outcasts in a war-scarred society where rape is a source of shame and a father's identity defines the child.

Relatives shun them, seeing in their tiny faces the atrocities committed by their enemies. Mothers struggle to accept them, torn between loyalty to their tribe and their instincts to love and care. Many are resigned to a life of isolation, where marriage is unlikely and where their children will forever carry a stigma.

"These are the babies of the janjaweed," said Hassan Abdallah Bakhur, a tribal elder from the town of Tawilla, 40 miles south of here. “I don't know how we can solve this problem. They and their mothers face a bad future.”

Read Sudarsan's article here.

It is heartbreaking. Adding to the genocide, with hundreds of thousands dead, is this story of mothers and children, still living, yes...but feeling dead inside. It is a story of mass rape, ethnic cleansing, and its grossly destructive aftermath for babies and mothers. As people of faith, can we hold them in our prayers and in our hearts?

A prayer for these mothers and children

A prayer for janjaweed rape babies

O God, we confess that You are Sovereign over the affairs of humankind.
Even when we cannot see your hand, O Lord, we trust your heart, and confess You as Good.
Countless times, Almighty God, You witness to us that You are well able to bring good from evil.
Now, O God, dear Abba of the nations, please hear our prayers for these newborn babies, babies born not of the will of the mother, not of the will of the family, but by cruel acts forced upon defenseless women. O God! Can any good come of such evil?
And now, Lord, you see these dear children, born of no will of their own, into families that see them as lesser beings, reminders of pain. O God! Can any good come of such evil?
We confess You, our Lord, above all these human affairs, God who transcends the most evil acts and our deepest, layered pain.
Hear our hearts, O God, for these babies, and for their mothers.
Raise up among these babies O God, that Moses, born in hated times, who would set his people free!
Raise up among these babies O God, that Esther, who loved her calling more than life!
Raise up among these babies an all consuming love, Love that will perish the deeds of darkness, and find...in that darkest night, a Light to lead the way, into freedom and truth!
O Abba! Good God, our Father in Heaven, hear our prayers! Receive these babies as Your dear children. Receive these single mothers as your dear daughters, Abba! Be to them the husband they may not have, the respect, counsel, wisdom and defense for which they long!
O, dear Father, provide for babies and mothers as only You can! 'Father to the fatherless, Husband to the widow,' that is who You claim to be: now provide, dear Abba --
Provide life and love for them through your Holy Spirit; in the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

One article from the Common Dreams Center says that the world has turned away, but the Darfur misery goes on. People of faith, is it said of us that we have turned away also?

Let us to our prayers and other actions of love...

Amen.

__________________

Note: I wrote this prayer 11-26-04 and published it on the Parkview blog. I repost it here, by request.

Also see:

Emily Wax, “‘We Want to Make a Light Baby’: Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing,” Washington Post.

Refugees International, “Stop the Genocide in Sudan.”

Common Dreams Center, “The World Has Turned Away, but Darfur Misery Goes On.”