Conflict And Crisis In Africa: Protecting All Children's Rights Poem by Truth Osumareton Egbe

I weep for my South African brother Hector Pieterson and the more than 500 other children whose rights, visions, dreams, future and bodies were crushed by people that were supposed to protect them in the Soweto Uprising
I weep for the 2.7 million children that death took in Africa's first World War in the Democratic Republic of Congo
I weep for the little ones striped by poverty, murdered by starvation during the civil war in Nigeria
I weep for my little brothers and sisters in South Sudan
Fighting to stay alive
Selected by fear, recruited at gunpoint
15,000 immature soldiers!
I weep for the 115,119 children displaced by conflict, replaced by crisis in the North Frontier districts of Kenya
I weep for the many African children - orphaned
That now live with human rights abuses and are molested by poverty
I weep and then I weep no further
For you and I - the remnants- need to stop existing and start living
We have been asleep with all the potentials and dreams for the future
African Child awake!
Let the stories of those who have gone before us propel us to do what we know how to do best
To believe, to love, to hope
Because the future is bright
The future is us
Awake for the world awaits you