The View from Here: The Wisest Person I Know

Couples everywhere, as spring shone her eccentric self. Beautiful.

Belgrade celebrated International Women’s Day this March like I’ve never seen before. While not an official state holiday, it may as well have been. Women, young and old, roamed the city smiling, so many nonchalantly holding single wrapped roses—red, white, pink—in their hands.

In celebration of women around the world, the winter seemed to recluse to her seasonal hibernation, allowing for lovers to lock their hands and wander the parks and streets of Belgrade. It was a beautiful tradition—a legitimate reason to give someone a rose. And who lead this floral festival? The YOUTH! They had finally come out of hiding.

When I first arrived in Belgrade, Serbia—where I’m doing some media-communications work for the United Nations Development Programme—it was drab, cold, and old. The buildings, undoubtedly relics of the country’s communist past, as if shivering in the snow, stood grey and dreary. But beyond the weather, roaming the streets, searching for the best coffee and late-night food, I noticed that something was missing: young people. They seemed to have gone to sleep, waiting for weather that wouldn’t necessitate layers or brandy, or both. And now, they were out, and in drones.

Though I haven’t seen a lot in my first few weeks in Belgrade, I don’t get the feeling that youth activism here—the social change sector, so to speak—is even breathing. It seems dead. Unemployment, poverty, and apathy seem to have overtaken any youth leadership in the country; a far cry from the youth fervor that led to the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s dictatorship.

I was talking to some young Serbians at a coffee shop a few days ago, and it really seems that they don’t care. There is an unequivocal sense of … blah! The government is ineffective, they say. There is corruption. There are no social services. But, worst, at least from those I spoke to, they don’t think they can make a difference. Hope is gone. Maybe, I’m wrong. Maybe those that I talked to are a terrible sample. But I think I am right.

Thankfully, inspiration from my fellow youth came from elsewhere this week: the streets of Libya. As stories continue to emerge of the battles and blood, strange thoughts are stirring within my inner activist. Thoughts about child soldiers. I never thought I’d be writing this, or even thinking it, but maybe there can be a context for them. Maybe their existence isn’t always morally repugnant.

Before you instant label me a child-rights-hating-bigot, let me explain. Please.

I recently read an article about the revolution in Libya, which told of how there are young women and men, joining the resistance. These teenagers aren’t being kidnapped and forced to fight, like any traditional notion of child soldiers. Instead, they are protecting their homes, they families, their dignity. They believe in something. They are fighting for democracy.

The international community has long condemned the use of child soldiers. The United Nations, on numerous occasions—the Convention on the Rights of Children, the Rome Statute etc.—has outlawed the use of children in combat. I too have always been appalled at the very idea. And I am in no way advancing a cause for the use of children, especially young children, in the choice-less atrocity of forced combat. Never would I advocate for the abuses that we’ve seen in places like Sierra Leone. But could there be the exception to the rule?

Maybe it would make me feel better if I changed the name and didn’t call them child soldiers, at all. Maybe, they’re better called adolescent soldiers. Freedom fighters? Activists? Or maybe just change-makers? What’s the difference?

I am friends with a few former child-soldiers. Their experiences were horrifying, scarring, and grave violations of human rights. But this, this seems different.

Often, when faced with questions of such moral dilemma, I turn to my father: my mentor and the wisest person that I know. I wonder what he would say? He is the human being in the world that, almost surely, loves me more than anyone else. I wonder if he’d tell me to fight. I mean, he was kicked out of East Africa at the age of 10, his family forced to flee the persecution and danger of nationalism’s daunting face. If he had had the chance to fight, if that chance was there, would he have? Would he want me to, if it were my country? What if this was happening in Canada? There’s little doubt in my mind that I’d be on the front-lines, fighting for the soil that has given me everything. If I had children, what would I tell them? I really do wonder what Papa would say, but I don’t have the audacity or courage to ask.

My musings it seems have found no other form than this column. Revolutions, it seems, don’t only change the lives of those on the ground; they challenge the notions, the norms, and the perceptions of peoples all across the world.

I haven’t found an answer, but let’s see what Belgrade’s alcoves share with me. In the mean time, I’m praying: for the victims of Japan’s earthquake and for the people in Libya.

Today, that’s the view from here.

--- Nejeed Kassam is a Canadian youth activist and is the founder of the international NGO’s `End Poverty Now’ and `Networks for Change.’ Nejeed is currently writing two books including the sequel to the “High on Life” book and is a young activist, at the moment working on his international resume in Belgrade, Serbia for the UN Development Programme.