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The Value of One Life, Dictated by the Recognition of their Death Sumayya Mohammed According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I am entitled to my right to life just as any other person is. The seemingly perfect application of this law reassures so many people around me of their safety and protection, except for children like me. I cannot find comfort in the law’s promise of equality and justice, because I learn from the news headlines every day on every electronic device that my life is not worth the same as another person’s. The joyous personality that I once emanated no longer exists, because I have been forced to shed my childlike innocence and face the realities that society has created only for me. I should be playing with my classmates during recess and learning how to write new vocabulary with precision, but I cannot view myself as the same person I was before, and I can no longer pretend that what I see in the news does not affect me. This space does not offer me a sense of belonging, because even as I craft buildings made of Play-Doh and popsicle sticks with my friends, I carry the heavy weight of knowing that, from all of my colleagues, I will be the first one to be forgotten because of my identity. The death of any white man named Charlie, Liam, or Rick sparks outrage over the internet, but the internet fails to blink an eye at the murder of thousands of children who are only guilty of their innocence. Does society only pay attention to people who are famous or people who possess authority? Does my pain not matter because society perceives children like me as things that should not have existed to begin with? If my name were Hind, Qisma, or Abdullah, or any other name that once represented a lineage and history so rich in culture and meaning, would I, too, be erased from the world’s new and improved, colonized history upon my passing? Will I, too, become like the Indigenous Peoples who remain in my school’s history texts only as chapters and not rich cultures, lineages, and peoples of powerful resistance and resilience? Will I become like the Indigenous girls and women who were unjustly removed from their homes and subjected to violence, only for the world to remain silent at their violation? Will I become like the Sudanese children who are caught in the crossfire of a corrupt political regime, known neither for their beauty and brightness before nor after their deaths? Or, will I become like the Uyghur children who are forced into labour, stripped of their rights to life and religion, only to be forgotten as people across the world benefit from their suffering? Every social advocate and activist emphasizes the importance of schooling and education, but how can I exist in these institutions while knowing that the bodies who build these curricula and policies are the same who dictate the value of my life based on my identity? How am I to thrive in the very societies that sell me utopian discourses of inclusivity and equity, while showing me that the value of one life is dictated only by the recognition of their death on television? |
