Explaining injustice

By John O'Shea

It's always difficult to explain injustice to an Irish child - sheltered from the adult world, most of them won't ever have experienced greed or cruelty, and so they simply can't understand how suffering is allowed to continue.

Returning from Ethiopian famine of 1984, having witnessed scenes of heartbreaking sadness, I had resolved to speak to anyone I could about that country's plight. One of the first invitations in my door was one asking me to speak to a class of young children in a school in Skerries.

A day or two later I found myself in front of a group of six and seven year olds, explaining as simply as I could how millions of people were starving to death in Ethiopia because their crops had failed, and how the world was doing very little to help.

Suddenly, a little lad piped up from the middle of the class. "My da," he said, "is a fisherman, and I can ask him to go in it to Ethiopia and bring some children back here so we can feed them. There's loads of boats in Skerries, and if everyone with a boat did the same thing, we could save everyone," he suggested.

Having witnessed the scale of the suffering in Ethiopia just a week earlier, and the seeming indifference of the international community to it, I was bowled over by the boy's suggestion.

It wasn't boats that were needed, but planes of food and - like boats in Skerries - there was no shortage of them. All that was lacking was the international will to pay for it.

Maybe we can all learn a lot about charity from the very young. If children don't understand adult injustices, this may not be simple innocence on their part.

Perhaps as world weary adults, we need to look into our own hearts and search once more for that pure sense of right and wrong that we all once had.