Consequences of War

I recently came across the following quotation from Gino Strada, M.D., in Green Parrots: A War Surgeon's Diary, Charta, 2004. It's worth thinking about.

Real data, with insignificant margins of statistical error: nine times out of ten, in each war (of the late twentieth century), the people who were hit were not carrying weapons. Thirty-four per cent of the victims were children under the age of fourteen: one victim in three was a child...Where are human rights for the victims of war? "In the last decade alone," according to a United Nations agency, "more than two million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict, and more than three times that number have been permanently disabled or seriously injured." Furthermore, "An estimated 20 million children have been forced"to flee their homes and more than one million children have been orphaned or separated from their families." All this is happening before our very eyes. Every year three million children, six children a minute, die or are wounded or mutilated, or they have their lives destroyed or overturned by war, while here we celebrate "Children's Day" and show off with the Delcaration of the Rights of the Child. Can the civilized conscience endure all this...?

Pretty sobering stuff. What do you think?