Providing schooling, play and counselling does so more completely. During the massive flow of refugees to Albania during the ethnic conflict in Kosovo, relief agencies first provided drugs, vaccines, clean water and food to prevent infant, child and maternal mortality. It is difficult to juxtapose the images of children colouring, stacking blocks and dancing with the images of children screaming in fear, huddling next to a wounded parent or lying on sheets saturated with their own blood. But in caring for children scarred by war, caregivers must attend to these young victims' emotional damage as well as to their physical wounds. Stealing from infants and children.
War is costly.
In addition to the physical and emotional scars that organized violence causes, it drains precious resources. Money that could be spent on building young lives is instead wasted on destruction. During a recent border war, for example, Eritrea and Ethiopia spent hundreds of millions of dollars on weapons, while 1 million Eritreans and 8 million Ethiopians faced famine. Costing more than 60,000 lives to date, the internal conflict in Sri Lanka has depressed the economy. Every dollar spent on a warplane is one unavailable to be spent on children.