That no child should have its life destroyed by war is the underlying philosophy of War Child. War Child’s founders, David Wilson and Bill Leeson, set up the charity in 1993 having witnessed the appalling treatment of children in the war-torn former Yugoslavia.
Ever since, War Child has been working in some of the toughest places on the planet with the people hardest hit by conflict: children. Today the charity is active in Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Central African Republic and Uganda, and soon to start working in Yemen. In the last year alone, War Child has changed the lives of 100,000 children and young people, helping them not only to survive, but to thrive. To learn, to earn, to grow up safe and grow up strong. Whether supporting Syrian girls to access education, challenging child marriage in Afghanistan or enabling child soldiers to rebuild their lives in Central African Republic, War Child is rebuilding futures, one child at a time.
Child’s global ambassador and immersed myself into their projects, travelling to the DRC and the Za’atari camp in Jordan, where the charity is working with refugees from the Syrian crisis.
And due to Global Partnership Family Office’s partnership with War Child, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to host a special event for War Child and clients of GPFO in October at London’s Mondrian Hotel. Guests saw an exclusive preview of my new film, Suffragette, introduced by the director Sarah Gavron and producer Faye Ward.
Children’s rights
Suffragette is a film about rights. What it means to want them, have them and see them realised. Initially, the suffragettes believed their story could change the system. But this failed. And when it failed, people tried to pacify them by making it clear that the decision-makers ‘promised nothing and they gave nothing’.
This just isn’t the case today. Every one of the billions of girls and boys on our planet has been made a promise that their rights will be respected and their lives protected. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out that vision, for the right to education, the right to justice and the right to live. It has been signed by all but two of the 193 countries in the world. But as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of these rights being declared, we commiserate that they go unrealised. A generation (theoretically) living with rights has been wronged.
The motivation that drove the suffragettes 100 years ago was the need to ”fight…for a time that every little girl and boy born in the world will have an equal chance”. But that’s not a battle for the history books. It’s one still being fought – hard – today.
Children in conflict don’t have equal life chances; a child in the DRC is 23 times more likely to die before his fifth birthday than a child in the UK. Women and children are the main victims of war; representing three out of four refugees worldwide, and of the 125 million children who don’t attend school, 70% are girls. These children are stoic and resilient, everyday heroes. But let’s be clear — their rights aren’t being respected. Their voices aren’t being heard. Their futures are being forgotten. When children represent 50% of those affected in war but less than 3% of global humanitarian aid is spent on their protection, the story and the system needs to change.
Regaining childhoods
With War Child, through my visits to Jordan and the DRC, I’ve seen their struggle firsthand. In the DRC, I travelled through the most challenging of environments. Abandoned, half-built, and half-destroyed buildings and slums form the bulk of the cityscape. Corruption, power cuts and impassable roads are part of daily life. The country is cloaked in tension and the palpable threat of chaos.
It’s within these dire conditions that I saw the extraordinary work of War Child and met children that, despite every element working against them, astonished me with their warmth, intelligence, determination and desire to learn and build a better life. So many of their stories have stayed with me.
I think about the four-year old boy found wandering the streets completely alone, so traumatised that he couldn’t speak. I think about Anna, the 12-year old girl who told me that every night she has nightmares that men are coming into her house to rape and kill her. I think about ten-year old Eric, whose entire family abandoned him to join the rebels. I think about David and Ali in the juvenile detention centre and all of the thousands of children struggling to survive in the internal displacement (IDP) camps.
As I write, all of them are being helped by War Child. The four-year old was found because of the child helpline and he is now in foster care. Anna is now going to a child-friendly space every day. Eric has been placed in a foster family and is attending school. David and Ali are talking about their experiences with professional counsellors. A programme to respond to the desperate needs of the children in the IDP camp has been developed.
All over the DRC, and in the other countries they work in, War Child is reinstating the rights that children have been so wrongly denied. The charity is giving them safe places to play, laugh and sing. More importantly, War Child is giving them back their childhood so they can go forward into a better, brighter, more hopeful adulthood.
My character in Suffragette, Maud, is driven by a single, simple truth ‘that there is another way to live this life’. I believe that. I have to believe that, for each and every one of the billion girls and boys struggling to survive in conflict-ravaged countries. And I believe we can make that a reality. The value that partnering with War Child has brought to my life is infinitely more than what I’ve given. And that’s why I’m honoured to be a global ambassador.
