Two Editorials
1- Childhood, dignity and future challenges
2- Ecumenical immunization of vulnerable areas... and the homeland
Childhood, dignity and future challenges
This speech was delivered by the Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) Dr. Michel E. Abs at the seminar organized by MECC under the title “Protective Policies for Childhood Dignity”, on Thursday 28 December 2023.
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)
Newborn children of unknown parents, school dropouts, street children, child labor, child abuse, child murder, child trafficking, and the list may be long, and if it indicates anything, it indicates the magnitude of the challenges and burdens placed on our countries and civil society to control and correct the state of childhood in our region.
Statistics indicate, at all levels, the presence of serious indicators that do not bode well for a promising future for our societies, coupled with projects, programs, activities, and institutions aimed at responding to the challenges before us.
What we aspire to may be a small part of what is required to secure an appropriate framework for a wide segment of our coming generations, knowing that if we secure this part, we will still be far from securing the requirements of producing adequate coming generations capable of taking upon themselves the future of a society and the aspirations of a nation.
We have placed all of this under the title of childhood dignity, noting that the goal of rehabilitating social capital and human dignity constitutes an essential part of our orientations at the Middle East Council of Churches and is, from our faith, national, and value standpoint, the cornerstone of all rehabilitation and development work.
We cannot say, despite all the efforts made, that the childhood protection available in our societies is sufficient and will bring the child to the safe shore of adulthood, without being exposed to various types of crises, problems, or difficulties, or all of them together. What our societies have been experiencing since the middle of the last century has gradually led to the decline of many development structures, or to the almost complete collapse of some of them, as a result of wars and the partial or complete disintegration of the structures of several states in the region.
What was accomplished, steady, and effective has become a goal that we try to return to, or to some of it, based on the conviction that we are working with the logic of the art of the possible in light of the situations our countries have reached, our potential that is declining radically, and our capabilities and competencies that are going backward.
If we compare the situation of childhood today in our Arab countries, with what it was like when the Convention on the Rights of the Child was issued and ratified by our countries, at the beginning of the nineties of the last century, we realize how much our conditions have deteriorated and how much our societies are in imminent fateful future danger, the harm of which increases day by day.
Newborns of unknown parents have increased, school dropout is on the rise, child labor is an unacceptable occurrence, as well as domestic, school, and institutional mistreatment of children, despite the progress of organizations that address these issues and the dedication of the largest number of people in charge.
Population growth on the one hand, devastating wars on the other hand, whether internal or external, economic decline as well, in addition to the cultural alienation to which we are subject, the development of means of communication and their misuse, the escalation of corruption, family disintegration, unemployment, and other reasons have led to what we are on it today.
The panorama of childhood in our country does not lead neither to happiness nor to reassurance, neither to the present nor to the future, because whenever activists and those involved in the field of childhood are active in accomplishing what protects it and secures a better future for it - on the micro level - transformations come on the macro level and overthrow everything that was accomplished with the stroke of a pen, so to speak.
The turmoil that our countries are experiencing, and the lack of stability, constitute the biggest stumbling block to the normalization of the childhood situation that determines the future of the country. Hence, we salute all those struggling in the field of child protection and development for their courage in what they do despite their certainty that they are working in an unstable environment with an unclear horizon that may cause all their achievements to collapse thus returning to square one.
This is the twentieth symposium that we are holding on human dignity, and it is the sixth symposium on childhood, and it culminates the five symposiums on childhood that preceded it. All of this is part of a more comprehensive program that aims, among other things, to produce an index of dignity in our country to be used to evaluate the state of dignity that summarizes, and dare I say, replaces, all social indicators.
Thanks to everyone who organized and participated in this symposium. Together we are laying a brick on the path to a future that may be better for generations yet to be born.
Middle East Council of Churches, 12/28/2023
Ecumenical immunization of vulnerable areas... and the homeland
This speech was delivered by the Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) Dr. Michel E. Abs at the Ecumenical Prayer held by Télé Lumière and Noursat, on the intention of peace in the South of Lebanon, at the Saint Maron Church – Bauchrieh, Lebanon.
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)
This small homeland, which the entire world yearns for, and which was envied by most of the peoples of the earth, fell, five decades ago into a quagmire of divisions, conflicts, and internal and external wars, with the accompanying decline at the moral, economic, social, and, as well as the political levels.
This small, luxurious country, which some say was artificial, and which they called the Lebanese Miracle, has lost many of its abilities, but it has not lost its power and distinction as a zone of freedom and a link between the East and the West.
Our generation witnessed the greatness of Lebanon, at the height of its brilliance, and also witnessed its descent into the hell of civil war and the wars of others. Our generation lived through a war called the Two-Year War, which quickly turned into a war that lasted a decade and a half. Our generation saw the sectarian-based killing of a people who had in principle put sectarianism into a coma. Our generation experienced displacement, theft, burning, and the destruction of the soul and the stone altogether. Who among you remembers Lebanon in the early seventies, when it was the focus of attention of strangers and the close ones?
Those who killed Lebanon at that time killed a universal model that humanity yearns for today in light of the international movement of peoples and the mixing of nationalities, races, ethnicities, religious and political affiliations, and other dimensions of diversity and difference. Those who killed Lebanon killed the microcosm that humanity needs, before the blessing of diversity in various countries of the world turns into the curse of conflict. They thought that by doing so they were killing Lebanon, the message.
Despite all this, Lebanon remains the home of the message, and the ideology of the phoenix remains active in us, as we are still resurrected from our ashes by starting to rebuild what was destroyed by the forces of treachery, and sometimes our own tampering.
Our people in the south, who are steadfast in every sense, on the borders of an occupation that has been on the people of Palestine for three-quarters of a century, and which sometimes tries to extend to us, and tries to steal some of what is ours, represent the Lebanese miracle and the doctrine of resurrecting life from the ashes.
How many times, throughout our modern history, have our people in south Lebanon suffered from wars, aggressions, destruction, and displacement, despite their steadfastness and, most often, their silent resistance?
The human bleeding that the south has suffered has not been suffered by any other region, no matter how neglected it was, as statistics over the past decades indicate. Yes, there are those who persevere, regardless of the sacrifices, and there are those who decide to reorganize their lives in another region, or another country. Yet, they turn his migration into steadfastness in a different way, by supporting those who remain and through reconstruction and development of the region through the product of their work abroad, a prelude to his return, albeit intermittently.
It is belonging to the land, the homeland, and to history, before whom sacrifices are nought. They are the roots that refuse to be uprooted, clinging to an identity that cannot be replaced by anything.
Our history in the Middle East Council of Churches is long in solidarity with the South of Lebanon, and even in supporting its steadfastness to the utmost and with all our capabilities.
During and after the war, the MECC had all kinds of projects there: from relief, to church reconstruction, to rehabilitating educational institutions after their reconstruction, to supporting church work from choirs and Sunday schools, to agricultural projects, to professional and productive support for craftsmen, to medical support in various ways, in addition to other detailed projects that can be detailed elsewhere. But since the thing is mentioned, I must mention that all well water production efforts were fought at that time in various forms, which had a negative impact on agricultural projects.
Our concern included two matters: the first was to support people to remain in their land, and the second was to fight the discord that the occupying forces were sowing among the people of the same nation.
Today, our support for the South continues in peace and war. Livelihood support and development projects during the peace period, and relief work during the war period as is currently underway. Our team working in Lebanon is always alert and ready to intervene when necessary and has historically fulfilled its humanitarian-national duty to the fullest extent.
The basic vision in our work is the example of “the bundle of sticks”, and we repeat it whenever we find it necessary, which means that “either if you are one allied bundle, therefore difficult to break, or if you are separate sticks, then you will break one stick after another.” The choice is yours.
This rule applies to all components of our people, with its various components, and there is no exception, and its application is by spreading awareness, solidarity, rejecting division, and non-discrimination among citizens. All of this begins with each citizen working on himself and purifying it of grudges and the demonization of others, on the basis that we are in the same boat and it is of no use for anyone to hide in his cabin while the boat is sinking.
We hope that the state will take upon itself the immunization initiative, through appropriate campaigns, that do not place burdens on the treasury, because in its absence, there will be disintegration and loss.
Noursat, Saint Maron Church, 12/27/2023