In 2021 — the most recent year for which we have the full data available — 5 million children died before their fifth birthday. Preventable stillbirths in labor are very common. If a child makes it out of the first 28 days of life, their biggest killers will be malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia.
For the most part, in rich countries, we don’t have to think about this unless we choose to — and it’s often a lot easier to look away. I have an automatic monthly donation scheduled to an effective anti-malaria charity, but I don’t spend much time contemplating dead children; it’s too difficult.
I have many friends and professional contacts in Israel, and for the last week, my social media has been full of heartbreaking images of dead and missing children as they reel from the brutal attack carried out by Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by many nations. Usually on Facebook, I see pictures of my friends’ children playing at the park or reading a book. Right now it’s full of pleas for their safe return or prayers in their memory. I’m devastated for them.
I’m also devastated for the many further children who have died or will die in the war that has now begun, as the brunt of the violence turns to Gaza. And I’m devastated by the blow to the project of caring about everybody, because a lot of the responses to this tragedy seem to assume that when we’re angry or afraid enough, we no longer need to bother.
The moral circle
A cornerstone of the work that we do here at Future Perfect is that the people far away from us matter as much as the people near us, that the people who die routinely of mundane diseases represent as acute and as painful a loss as the people who die in flagrant, shocking acts of terrorism, that the media tends to be drawn toward certain kinds of horror and away from other kinds. That makes it harder for the world to pull together, keep its eyes on the prize, and end all the senseless deaths of children.
I really…
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