What war does to us and why we need world peace

Rahul
Indus International School
India

I see dead people, departed for a better place.
I see flames engulfing the nearby buildings.
Smoke clouds my vision.
As we all run for safety,
Sandstorms push us to and fro.

My legs ache and the wind bites my skin.
A bomb falls,
A shriek mournfully echoes around wasted Baghdad.
A scorpion darts out of a shadow.
I run.

Bread and water is a feast for us.
I fight for the food,
Thrown from the trucks.
I fight to survive this war.

I try to hang on to a thread of hope,
And imagine a time of peace.
But it is as difficult to hang on to,
As a drop of water in the sand.

My dreams are filled with flames, smoke and death,
And most of all, the fear that they'll take me,
Just like they took my mother and father.

Heaven help this world.

This is what life is like in Iraq for a twelve-year-old child. If the whole world were to be enveloped in a war like this, this is what your life would be like. Today there are about 30 wars being fought. Some are small wars involving only about a hundred insurgents and a similar number of soldiers. Other wars have tens of thousands of soldiers slugging it out in major battles with tanks, ships and aircraft. The latter type of war is the war being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most wars happen because someone does not have something that it believes it should have. For example, in the Falklands War, Argentina wanted to have the Falklands Islands, which were then held by the British.

I think that in order to facilitate world peace, we should eradicate poverty and the rich/poor divide. The United Nations is a valuable tool to gain world peace but the veto power of the UN Security Council hinders it in its quest for world peace. Supporting organisations like Oxfam, who help people in times of need, will also help a lot.

If people are educated, wars are less likely to happen, as educated people don't make rash decisions like declaring war at the drop of a hat. Teaching people that wars have a negative impact on the world will help.

Without global peace, goodwill and cooperation between all countries, the whole world will be like the poem above.

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