Syrian Children outside their UNHCR Tent – Refugee Camp in Jordan
Photo Credit: UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) /M. Abu Asaker

We live in a patriarchal world. With relatively few exceptions, our fathers, our men, determine the direction and evolution of our societies. This Father’s Day—with persistent inequality, a permanent state of violence and war, climate mayhem, and escalating destruction of human habitats—I ask: Father, where are you?

Father, where are you when a son goes on a shooting rampage, killing other human beings because he believes he has the right to do so?

Father, where are you when the leaders of our governments send our sons and daughters to fight in illegitimate wars of domination?

Father, where are you when our sons rape our daughters as a demonstration of their male privilege and dominance over the female body?

Father, where are you when bankers go unpunished for bringing down the world’s economy while our underpaid workers are locked away in profit-making prisons for minor infractions?

Father, where are you when our children go hungry because our working men and women don’t receive a living wage?

Father, where are you when factories dump toxic waste in our drinking water?

Father, where are you when a son believes that African Americans are a threat to his country and sets out to start a civil war?

Father, where are you when transnational corporations level our forests, the lungs of our planet?

Father, where are you when the poor, homeless and mentally ill among us are treated like criminals?

Father, where are you when transnational corporations continue to pump carbon into our atmosphere, overheating our planet and causing climate mayhem?

Father, where are you when men destroy our homes with bombs and leave us refugees in a No Man’s Land?

Father, where are you when transnational corporations take control of our government to guarantee their dominance over the rest of humankind?

Father, where are you? Your presence and voice are needed in these chaotic times.