What is wrong with the world? It seems everything! The sight of Kenyan children this week and the next few weeks trooping to their exam rooms provides an opportunity to be grateful and give thanks. Children in the Middle East and many other parts of the world are not so lucky.

In Israel and among the Palestinian population, it is a harrowing sight of boys and girls either too terrified to go to school or whose lives have been snuffed off in the most brutal way. War is ugly, and that is putting it mildly. How else would one describe adults drawing their knives from the sheath, placing them on the necks of babies in their coats and severing the heads of the babies from their bodies?

About a month ago, young people gathered under the canopy of the beauty of the night sky doing what young people usually do – burn energy, while away time, socialise with friends, had their lives cut short by the sound of gunfire from across the fence where Hamas had its abode.

Many of those young people did not tell their story; some are maimed for life, others are held in tunnels in Gaza, while some simply disappeared: no funeral and no news as to where they are. The dream that they will walk from the horizon one day and return home to the warm embrace of their loved ones is just that: a dream.

Now, with the fog of war stretched, missiles flying in from Israel in retaliation, the youth of Palestine are equally bearing the brunt. They can’t go to school, can’t write exams, and will live with the trauma that the war for this contested real estate has brought. The trauma of war does not discriminate.

Soon, the war may end. The dream is that peace may return to this contested land of the ancient tribes and ancient feuds where hope is ignited and faith restored.

It is not just in this hallowed ground where children, victims of war, will live with scars that the adults have visited on them. They will never be the same again. Brutality will be seared in their psyche forever. Most of them will never grow up to be normal – their life has been stolen from them. It is happening in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, where ancient feuds over boundaries, inane cultures and practices, and identity never seem to die.

This is the fate of humanity and not confined to race. Across the continent, Africa has had her own demons, and they refuse to go down quietly. Democratic Republic of Congo is simmering, as it has done since the days of Mobutu Sese Seko.

The curse of wealth has plagued DRC and her children. In Ethiopia, old feuds between ethnic communities have remained.

Sudan woke up to launch her own campaign of hate. Many children have been caught in the fire and will never be the same. Her neighbour to the south, with whom it shares a name, has been at it for a while. The ground still soaks with blood.

This is what we need to face. It is the old, their years advanced, their interests often parochial, obscure, their positions dangled precariously, who are the architects of hatred. They suffer less from the consequences – start the war, negotiate its progress, and harvest the windfall.

We have our case in Kenya to cite – the plight of baby Pendo, only six months old, bludgeoned to extinction by police for a political dispute in which she had no part. The bludgeon from the fog of politics snuffed her life away from what should have been the safe arms of her parents, the comfort and security of her home.

Countries that can afford to have their children trooping to school to do exams in peace ought to be grateful to God; many do not have this luxury. That is why protecting it is important to save these children from these tragedies. It is the responsibility of the adults to make this world a safe place for children to be children and to grow.

—The writer is Dean, School of Communication, Daystar University