A mother in Texas checks her child’s backpack before the bus arrives. Inside the lunchbox are snacks and juice. Tucked against the math workbook is a flat gray plate that can stop a bullet. It weighs more than his textbooks, yet she sends him off hoping it is light enough to carry and strong enough to matter. This is what childhood looks like in one of the wealthiest countries on earth. Parents improvise armor because no law or policy has yet armored their children against the reality of guns at school.
In 2023, firearms claimed the lives of 2,566 children ages 1 to 17—that’s an average of seven young lives lost per day in the United States—with a firearm death rate of 3.7 per 100,000 children in that age group ACHI. Gun injuries stretch further. An estimated 17,000 children and teens are wounded by bullets each year—about 46 every day (Everytown Research). These are classrooms emptied, birthdays uncelebrated, futures stolen in a second.
Across an ocean, another mother wakes before dawn in Burkina Faso. She has nothing to pack for her daughter but a plastic cup. At school (if she is lucky enough to go to school) there may be a meal of maize or beans fortified with vitamins. For now her child waits with an empty stomach, already thin from months of shortage. Malnutrition is slower than a bullet but it kills far more. In 2023, 4.8 million children under five died worldwide, and nearly half of those deaths were linked to malnutrition (UNICEF). In sub-Saharan Africa alone, that means roughly 1.1 million child deaths in a single year, about 3,000 every day—the equivalent of a school bus full of children lost every 15 minutes.
There is no ballistic shield against hunger. But prevention exists. Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months could prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths each year (WHO Africa). Ready-to-use therapeutic food can cure 90 percent of severely malnourished children within six weeks when supplies reach them (UNICEF USA). School meal programs keep children in classrooms and alive; clean water and sanitation cut diarrheal disease, which still causes about 9 percent of global child deaths (WHO).
For perspective, traffic accidents in the United States killed 1,019 children ages 0 to 14 in 2023, and injured an estimated 161,478—that is about 3 deaths and 442 injuries per day (NHTSA) Crash Stats. These numbers are heavy, yet they still pale beside the daily death toll of hunger in Africa.
The comparison is not to diminish one grief with another but to see them side by side. In one place parents guard against sudden violence with steel plates. In another they fight a slower violence with cups and spoons and empty hands.
Every child deserves protection. In America that protection should mean schools free from gunfire. In Africa it must mean bowls filled with food, classrooms with meals on the table, mothers with clean water to pour. What joins these two images is love that refuses to surrender. Parents everywhere wake each day to send children into danger. The difference lies in what the world chooses to fund, what it chooses to ignore, and what it chooses to accept as normal.
By Janica Southwick, Founder and Chief Editor, Food for Africa News
Sources:
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health – Guns remain leading cause of death for children and teens
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens
ACHI-gun statistics 2023- https://achi.net/newsroom/child-gun-deaths-surging-in-arkansas-and-across-us-cdc-data-show/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Everytown Research – The impact of gun violence on children and teens
https://everytownresearch.org/report/the-impact-of-gun-violence-on-children-and-teens/
UNICEF – Under-five mortality data
https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/under-five-mortality/
WHO Africa – Child health and nutrition overview
https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/child-health
UNICEF USA – Fighting childhood malnutrition
https://www.unicefusa.org/what-unicef-does/childrens-health/nutrition/fight-childhood-malnutrition
WHO – Child mortality and causes of death data
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-details/GHO/child-mortality-and-causes-of-death
NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) – Crash Stats: 2023
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/813712
News.com.au – US mum sends child to school with bulletproof shield in backpack
