Unwanted children.

On March 13 a bus carrying school children and teachers from Belgium and the Netherlands crashed into a tunnel wall in Switzerland. A total of 28 people died of which 22 were children and 6 were adults. Six were from the Netherlands and the rest from Belgium. The entire nation of Belgium went into shock. The funeral was attended by King Albert II of Belgium and the Dutch Crown Prince, Willem-Alexander and their wives. The Prime Minister of Belgium, Elio Di Rugo and of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte also attended the church service. In The Guardian Weekly of February 17, an article " The Long Walk to Europe " tells the story of Afghan children who have walked all the way to Paris. One child walked for a whole year. It tells the story of a 13 year old boy, Morteza with frost bite in his feet. He was ditched by people smugglers in Turkey and walked through Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia with a handheld GPS. He walked through the snow in the mountains of Croatia and Slovenia where they ran into police and got separated from the adults. There are 4883 Afghan children in Paris waiting for asylum and each has a harrowing tale to tell. One 16 year old boy, Omar spent 5 months on the road, in and out of the hands of people smugglers. On the advice of a smuggler he swam a canal and walked for 5 hours in wet clothes towards the lights of a town in Greece. Why such desperation? Why are the families of children sending them away on such hazardous journeys from their own country? The article does not tell us of how many died trying to reach Europe or how many were sold into slavery. We only hear of the stories of the boys who reached Paris. The difference between the value of children from Belgium and those from Afghanistan is stark. In one country children are so precious that the whole country mourns their tragic death while children from the other country are just so much flotsam travelling from here to there in a bid to survive. Switzerland is a land-locked country in the Alps with various tongues. In Geneva they speak French while in Zurich it is all German but it is one of the richest countries in the world. Afghanistan is also a land-locked country where the Pashtun, Hazara and Uzbeks are forever fighting each other. Its people are dirt poor and seem to be stuck 200 years in the past. The reason is obvious. Afghans produce a lot of children who then struggle to scratch a living from a rocky terrain whereas in Belgium and in Switzerland birth rate is low so children are precious and cared for. Too much supply reduces value, whether of potatoes or of humans. When will the world wake up to this simple truth? Sadly hundreds of charities and NGOs depend on the suffering of children to get their funding and pay their directors fat salaries so they will never talk about reducing fertility. And children will continue to suffer.