More Buds Need a Chance to Blossom

Like flower buds, children absorb energy from their surroundings as they mature, eventually blossoming and astonishing the world with their beauty.

Loving caresses they receive as little babies, encouraging eyes they meet as toddlers and good-wish hugs when they leave home for the first time are blessings that help deliver them through all the storms in their lives.

But not all buds have the chance to flourish. No small number of children have lost their lives in armed conflicts, and many who have survived were deprived of their parents, close relatives and playmates. Scars are in their hearts, and you can see that from their eyes.

Light and joyful lives have already become remote dreams for these children. Even if they have a chance to enter their adulthood, would people expect brisk tunes from a soul on the grill?

Infant brides are not news in areas ridden with poverty. Girls hardly in their teenage are married to men of their fathers' or even grandfathers' age.

You can't say it's not harsh for them, although these girls, long used to hunger and disease, know nothing of fairy tales and fancy clothes as their peers in better-off countries.

Child labor is another embarrassment of humankind. Children less than 10 years old are forced to toil for more than 12 hours in gloomy mills in certain parts of the world.

Meanwhile, many others, including those in the developed world, are plagued with porn and drugs due to lax adult attention.

Every child is born with his or her legitimate rights -- the right to be protected and understood and the right to play and dream.

The United Nations General Assembly designated Nov. 20 as Universal Children's Day. Two decades ago on that day, it adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child to guarantee the basic rights of children.

However, many boys and girls are still left in the cruelties of violence, exploitation, discrimination and negligence. Every responsible grown-up should ask him- or herself what he or she could do to change this situation.

Although flowers in dim and cramped corners have the natural tendency to struggle up for the sunshine, it shouldn't become an excuse for negligence from the adult world.

How to love and protect our children is a common task of all families, communities and societies, and any failure to respond to their silent calls of help is criminal.

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy," said Oscar Wilde, the 19th century Irish writer. Good children means a good future for all humankind, what could be more important than that?

(Xinhua News Agency November 6, 2009)