CENTER FOR CHILDREN ASSOCIATED
WITH DISASTER C/O JESUS
EVANGELISTIC MINISTRIES INTERNATIONAL

Background / Rationale

In spite of the fact that children are the most innocent
and physically weak of the entire human race, they simply
remain the most vulnerable sufferers during and in the aftermath
of every human-related disaster, be it natural or man-made.
Disaster Prevention Programs and their inadequately equipped
managers all over the world, from time immemorial, have never
succeeded in giving pro-life concession to the innocent and feeble
state of being of children. In other words, children's rights and survival
have never enjoyed the attention they deserve during disasters.

The disadvantages of being a child are most numerous and biting
in the third world especially Sub-Sahara Africa, where the heat of
wars, irresponsible (teenage) parenthood and diseases such as
Malaria, HIV/Aids, etc., have melted away the bonds between
millions of children and their parents transforming the former into
parent-less wretched citizens of the earth planet.

Liberia, after 14 years of bloody and senseless conflict, by
all accounts, provides citizenship to one of the world's legion of
war-related orphans found in almost all refugee camps in Africa
and beyond. They are, of course, part of the global burden of
refugees borne by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and the ICRC.

The UNHCR and the ICRC are doing all that is humanly
possible concerning displaced persons in Liberia unfortunately
and unavoidably doing far less to address the rights and survival
of all the Orphans and unaccompanied children as a result of their
limitation in time and space. The orphans and other unaccompanied
children who go unidentified by the UNHCR simply continue to
be defined by their innocent and feeble state of being in situations
where only those who can be identified by adults have the right to
humanitarian activities that deal with disadvantaged
and distressed people like them.

It follows from the above, therefore, that until and
unless individuals and or Organizations such as Jesus Evangelistic
Ministry International (JEMI), UNHCR and their such likes come in
fast and thick, they stand the double-portion risk of
becoming future-less human beings and criminals!

And it is against this background that the Jesus Evangelistic
Ministry International considered it morally imperative to
include the welfare of orphans and other unaccompanied
children on the list of their high priority service areas.