From Syria, a Tragic Call to Protect All the World’s Children

This week, our hearts were broken by the scenes of the unspeakable chemical weapons attack on innocent children in Syria. We have watched children gasping and dying from one of the most insidious weapons ever devised. And we know these agonizing scenes were just the latest in a long series of horrors perpetrated by Bashar al-Assad on children and civilian families trapped in a brutal conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The suffering of children anywhere is a challenge to the conscience of the world. In the light of a child’s eyes, we witness the brilliant divine spark that transcends every barrier of culture, language and nationality. When a child is murdered, the crime tears at the very fabric of our humanity.

The carnage in Syria has displaced over ten million people — five million of them driven from the country, and more than half of them children. Terrorized by Assad and ISIS, desperate for a place to live in peace, they have received rejection from the U.S. under the Muslim and refugee ban. We degrade our values and our security when we slam the door in the face of children fleeing such atrocities.

The world needs America’s leadership to spare children from tragedy, and not only in Syria. More than 20 million people across North East Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen are facing threat of famine and starvation in the next six months. Almost 1.5 million children are at immediate risk of death, and many more might have their development permanently stunted unless America acts. Slashing the State Department and foreign aid budget by 30 percent would only deepen the crisis facing these children. We must not stand on the sidelines and watch them die — especially when our intervention could save so many innocent young lives.

Even here in America, hunger and poverty stalks children in too many communities. Astoundingly, even in the greatest nation on earth, one in five children lives in poverty and goes to sleep hungry at night. Sadly, their struggle will only be worsened by the cuts of the President’s budget blueprint, which would hollow out vital supports for children in poverty.

Children need America to be their champion. We should be relentless, dissatisfied and tenacious to protect them. That requires a budget that honors our sacred responsibility to the children around the world who are victims of famine, war, and disease — not one that slashes the investments that young lives at home and around the world depend on. We must recognize we have the same moral responsibility to the child dying of starvation as the child dying of sarin.

For the sake of the world’s children, we must pray that the heartbreaking scenes from Syria have truly awakened the conscience of the world.