The schooling campaign of Kurd children

At the first impact, Kurd children surprise with their silence and their look; they search for comprehension, they wait for being helped with humility and dignity. It seemed time, in this place, had finished to pass. Almost all the activities were stagnant, both in the factories and in the offices. At the beginning, you could not believe that there were not on the market any applications for job that could meet halfway a more and more increasing number of young diplomats and graduates. During our stay in Kurdistan, we noticed that everything was a consequence of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime, who, with the embargo in the Kurd zone has raised the salaries of the state employees. Now, in this zone a worker of any field earns more than a teacher or an engineer; then you can see that Saddam Hussein’s regime damages only the intellectual profession. This policy, typical of a dictatorial regime, has sparked a mechanism that has obliged the families (the most deprived of their leaders) to send their own male sons to go to work instead of going to school. This choice comes from the need of survival. This policy apparently seems to meet the people’s economical poverty halfway, but in reality it hides other purposes. Children, young boys and especially girls don’t attend school and loose the freedom of thinking with their own mind.

“The morality of reality”: When an adolescent of the west world thinks that freedom is doing what one wants, he has not really understood that “freedom of thinking and living” of every human being begins with the democratic education of his mind. However, when an adolescent has not realised the usefulness of school, he has consequently not appreciated the only one and the real value of freedom. Kurd have just realised that mechanism but in order to survive they have to go through it, not having the chance of buying the expensive didactic material. In the zone under the Kurd control where there is a double embargo, almost all the products have elevated prices and people can’t afford them. In the Kurd zone under the regime, instead, there are very few products on the market because of the embargo made by the West. Fancy that many people ignore the existence of numerous food products. When you decide to send helps in these war zones, it is wise to weigh up all these aspects, evaluating the social-economical aspect and all its consequences.

From the letters that children’s families have written to the families in Italy, you can notice the wish to send their children to school. As Association, we have bought some didactic material, giving so to 10.000 children the possibility to study. After our stay, we can know what they need and what is more useful and righter for this population.

At the end of this experience in Kurdistan, it remains the importance of this journey that will surely be the inspiration for the Azadì Association for numerous ideas and projects for the future.