The children don’t have it that good in our world in our times. The child as victim is the vicious litany of the last century, as it was the one before.

The most vulnerable are crushed under the wheels of history and never more so than in the lifetime of the people reading this!

A visit to the Yad Veshem memorial to the Holocaust is an unforgettable experience and to spend even a brief moment in the memorial for the children who died – the one and a half million Jewish children who died – stays with you for the rest of your life.

Mirrors reflect a million and a half pinpoints of light and the names of the dead children are repeated over and over again – helpless victims.

Now, ironically, it is the children who suffer at the hands of the Israeli Defence Force – hundreds dead since the most recent conflict began.

We’ve seen the pictures, felt the outrage, shuddered at the horror; we think of our children, how it would be to see them dragged from the rubble.

There are plenty more vivid images from the 20th and 21st centuries – they’ve been pretty rubbish centuries for the children.

From: the orphanages of Romania; the dying rooms of China; the dead toddlers of Palestine caught in the cross fire; the abused children of the Nazareth homes in Glasgow; the slave carpet maker children of India.

It makes the high idealism of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child seem pretty pathetic, a sick joke: the right to affection, love and understanding; the right to adequate nutrition, food and medical care; the right to protection from all forms of neglect cruelty and exploitation; the right to free education and to full opportunity for play and recreation; the right to a name and a nationality; the right to special care if differently abled; the right to be amongst the first to receive help in time of disaster; the right to learn to be a useful member of society and to develop individual abilities; the right to be brought up in the spirit of peace and universal kindness; the right to enjoy their rights regardless of race, colour, sex, religion, national or social origin.

A sick joke indeed... all aspiration and not much delivery. In fact, the very opposite of how it should be is the way it is.