Beyond the factual reports there are the personal stories – the stories of those enduring catastrophe. Reading them produces a pit in my stomach, my hands to hover above my keyboard shaking, as sympathy, confusion, and sadness creep into my heart. The world spirals a little further down the drain and I bear witness like a bookkeeper that counts the dead, far removed.

Where did we go so terribly wrong? Peering out the window my eyes fix on a plant struggling to overcome the snow and the wonders of its make fills me with brief and unexpected hope. There is no malice in nature, only the ancient cycle of life and transformation that has existed for billions of years. My eyes wander from that plant back to the words on the screen before me and I am met with details of thousands of children wetting their beds, unable to sleep, terrified of death, their lives scared forever beyond that which they have already endured.

No child should be placed in the position of having to fear death or spend their days plagued with panic. Think on your own children and imagine them thus. Imagine the outrage that would envelop you and your neighbours were your children placed in that position. Even here in British Columbia, where the child poverty rate is the highest in the nation, such a reality is so beyond the pale as to make most parents sick to their stomachs.

We do not see it, and therefore have no understanding of it. When a child goes missing around here the earth is moved to find them. That is the reality to which we are accustomed. Worlds away, parents of those children that come face to face with death and disparity on a daily basis possess no such comfort of thought. For them, they must watch their children’s innocence disintegrate, the promise of any sort of inwardly peaceful future chipped away like so much stone until all that remains is the rubble to which their eyes have become accustomed.

No child deserves to have their innocence stolen. It is a crime akin to murder or rape, though little regarded as such. The empty shells of human beings is all that it produces, leaving some with nothing else to cling to but hate, others a daily status quo too terrible to contemplate.

For the sake of children affected by war, I urge you this holiday season to donate what you can to UNICEF.