Through children's eyes: Children's rights in Shatila camp

In the summer of 1998, Huquq al-Nas (Rights of the People), a supplement of the Lebanese daily al-Nahar, decided to do a special issue on the Palestin ian camps in Lebanon. One of the topics to be dealt with was children's rig hts in the camps. A graduate student at the American University of Beirut w ho is a volunteer teacher in Shatila camp, Mayssoun Sukarieh, was asked to undertake this assignment She suggested getting the children themselves to write little pieces each on a particular right they felt was denied them or severely compromised. Huquq al-Nas liked the idea. The following testimonies were written by seventeen children between the ag es of twelve and fifteen. Three times a week these children meet with il Ms . Sukarieh to study English and Palestinian history at Bayt Atfal al-Sumud, a local nongovernmental organization that operates nurseries and dental cl inics and sponsors other activities for children in the refugee camps of Le banon. With Ms. Sukarieh's help, the children have set up a lending library in Shatila and correspond by e-mail with Palestinian children in Dheishe c amp in the West Bank. Before the planned special supplement on the camps could see the light of d ay, Huquq al-Nas folded. But the pieces had been written and JPS decided th at they were worth publishing. They were translated by Muhammad Ali Khalidi . The pieces are preceded by Ms. Sukarieh's account, taken from her classroom notes, of how they came to be written.