GLOBAL CHILD WATCH: UPDATED NEWS ON CURRENT GLOBAL EVENTS AFFECTING CHILDREN 1. January 2009 Week 1: The ongoing war in the Gaza strip is affecting the rights of all the region's children. Our focus is on the plight of ALL children in the area, both Israeli and Arab. Matters of concern cover issues of mental trauma, the use of DIME explosives, the ferocious messages of hate and bigotry, racial segregation and religious intolerance. Of particular concern is the high numbers of child casualties, and ofcourse when parents are killed children are left homeless and orphaned in a lot of cases. The destruction of civillian abodes is also inconsiderate because this amplifies the homelessness dimension. DIME explosives are narrow-range weapons that obliterate the victim but also have the side-effect of being carcinogenic. There may never be a well-balanced political solution to the crisis in Gaza, but this destruction of human life will certainly cause the surviving children to grow up maimed either mentally or physically. 2. January 2009-Week 2: The bombing of Gaza and the mayhem that ensued continues. Children number well over half of the total almost one thousand civilian deaths. Nothing is being done practically to end the carnage and terror. All foreign Journalists are kept out of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli authorities and so actual numbers of dead and wounded children are still not known. Children are at times being discovered around the dead bodies of their parents and they are without care. Reports mount of the use by the IDF of white phosphorous bombs and other DIME munitions. Death rules Gaza's children and once more politics of fear and domination blind the belligerents from considering the plight of the children.    3. January 2009-Week 2: Zimbabwe's political stone-walling causes the ongoing Cholera epidemic and social-economic collapse to go unabated. Children are the weakest most vulnerable victims of the frozen political process between the ruling ZANI-PF and the opposition MDC party.