Article by Libyan Journalist Mona Tuka

There are international days created for celebration, others created for remembrance, and a third category created to embarrass us before ourselves. World Children’s Day in Libya belongs to the third category—a day that does not permit us to raise slogans as much as it forces us to confront a painful question: Which of the Libyan child’s rights still truly exists—beyond paper?

Childhood here is not a phase of life, but a silent battle fought by children alone. A childhood that slips between the shadows of states, not their embrace. When a state stumbles, the first thing it drops is the child.

A child who never asked to be born into a fractured geography, nor chose to witness—far too early—the collapse of the very structures meant to protect him: the family, the school, the street, and the law.

Libya today is not facing a child crisis, but a national crisis in which the child has become its most honest mirror. And because children do not know how to embellish reality… our reflection in their eyes is painful.

Violence Is Not an Event… It Is an Environment

What is happening is not a series of isolated incidents, but a complete climate shaped by political division, extreme poverty, social polarization, security vacuums, and collapsing trust within families. In such an environment, violence becomes a familiar language, and the child becomes an easy target. Homes—built to protect—become the first sites of violation. When childhood is killed inside the home, everything else becomes a minor detail.

 

Armed Conflict… When a Child Is Pushed Into a Place They Can Never Return From

Child recruitment, direct and indirect exploitation, and involving children in conflicts they cannot comprehend—these are not merely violations; they are forms of erasing the future.

A child stripped of childhood in a moment of war will not find peace in a moment of peace. War is not what weapons fire—it is what weapons leave behind.

 

Displacement… A Journey Adults Cannot Understand, So How Can Children?

Tens of thousands of children in Libya drag bags that do not resemble schoolbags, but rather a wandering tent for a punctured memory. Displacement is not a move from one place to another; displacement is a move from certainty to uncertainty, from a home to emptiness, from fragile safety… to fragility without safety.

 

Psychological Impact… Invisible Scars That Shape an Entire Life

A child who falls asleep in fear, wakes up to the sound of conflict, and witnesses daily family tension carries within them a seed of anxiety that extends into adolescence, adulthood, relationships, work, and self-image. It is a long-term loss that cannot be treated with painkillers… but only with a comprehensive national vision. A society that allows a child to break signs a long-term contract with chaos.

 

Why Should This Day Be Embarrassing, Not Celebratory?

Because Libya today does not need a day to raise slogans about children’s rights; it needs a courageous acknowledgment that childhood has become one of the most vulnerable groups buried beneath layers of crisis. The real question is not What do we celebrate? but What is left to celebrate at all?

 

Protection Is Not Recommendations… It Is an Existential Decision

To protect the Libyan child, updating laws is not enough—law must move from paper to practice. Awareness is not enough—childhood must be understood as a matter of national security, not a social file.

Psychological support is not enough—the environment that breaks the child must be rebuilt before we rehabilitate them. Child protection is not merely the job of institutions, but of a society that decides childhood is a red line, inviolable regardless of crisis or division.

 

On World Children’s Day… Libya’s Message to Itself

If we want a future, we must protect those who will build it. If we want a recovering nation, we must start with those who have no voice. A child is not part of society… a child is society after ten years. They are the future of war—or the future of peace. And whatever we leave for childhood will return to us, multiplied