Child Combatants: The Road to Recovery

Child Soldiers Home Page: :http://www.cdi.org/atp/childsoldiers/

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER:

Admiral Gene La Rocque (USN, Ret.),

President, Center for Defense Information

HOST:

Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr., USN (Ret.)

Director, Center for Defense Information

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH:

Colonel Dan Smith, USA (Ret.)

SENIOR PRODUCER:

Mark Sugg

PRODUCERS:

Glenn Baker

Moon Callison

Jennifer Jones

Jon Lottman

Stephen Sapienza

PRINCIPAL ANALYSTS & SCRIPTWRITER:

Stephen Sapienza

SEGMENT PRODUCER:

Stephen Sapienza

NARRATOR:

Rick Boardman

VIDEO GRAPHICS and TITLES:

Stephen Sapienza

ORIGINATION:

Washington, D.C.

PROGRAM NO.:

1201

INITIAL BROADCAST:

13 September 1998

CONDITION OF USE:

Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" (Center for Defense Information).

Videotapes also available.

DR. NEIL BOOTHBY

Child Psychologist, Senior Coordinator for Refugee Children, United Nations

DR. MIKE WESSELLS

Professor of Psychology, Randolph-Macon College, Virginia

PROFESSOR ELDERIDGE JONES

Former Dean, Sierra Leone University

NASSIM MOHAMMED

Program Coordinator, UNICEF - Sierra Leone

CORNELIUS WILLIAMS

Child Protection Officer, UNICEF - Sierra Leone

COLONEL MAXWELL KHOBE - (NIGERIA)

Military Commander, Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group or ECOMOG, - Sierra Leone

[PROGRAM BEGINS]

NARRATOR: When most Americans imagine combat and war, they see grown men or women on ships and planes, marching in formation, or hitting the beaches from Normandy, to Somalia, to Kuwait.

Yet today, hundreds of thousands of children are fighting in wars and armed conflicts started by adults.

Boys and girls, some as young as 8 years old, forced to suffer the horrors of modern combat.

But what happens to these children when the guns fall silent? Embittered, fearful, often with emotional and physical wounds ... How do these child soldiers begin their journey on the road to recovery?

AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR INTRO

ADMIRAL CARROLL: Welcome to America's Defense Monitor. The Center for Defense Information recently sent our TV crew to the West African

country of Sierra Leone to find out how the people there are attempting to rehabilitate the many children who have been involved in combat. This program will provide you with an intimate, heart touching look at the challenges involved in helping child combatants lay down their guns and become productive citizens.

[FADE UP FROM BLACK]

ON SCREEN QUOTE: "It's time for all governments, including our own, to take the necessary steps to ensure that the most vulnerable members of society are protected from the horrors of war." -President Jimmy Carter, June 1998

NARRATOR: More than 2 million children have been killed in armed conflicts over the past ten years. Three times that many have been seriously injured or permanently disabled.

But children are no longer simply passive victims of warfare. The flood of lightweight, powerful weapons to poorer nations, combined with the vulnerability of young children, have propelled more and more kids onto the front lines.

The United Nations estimates some 250,000 children under the age of 18 serve in national and guerilla armies... in places like Liberia, Burma, Palestine, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

In an effort to stem the use of children as soldiers, the United Nations has proposed an amendment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to raise the minimum age of recruitment and participation in armed conflict from 15 to 18 years of age.

Unfortunately, international efforts to prevent the use of children in armed conflict have been stifled by the United States.

Washington vigorously opposes the proposal because the Pentagon want to preserve its practice of recruiting 17 year olds, even though minors make up only one-half of one percent - some 7000 U.S. troops.

In addition, 400,000 high school boys and girls belong to Pentagon sponsored JROTC military programs where kids are taught to march, shoot, act, and think like soldiers.

WESSELLS: "the United States needs to become a signatory to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child."

NARRATOR: Dr. Mike Wessells is a noted professor of psychology at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. He currently works with programs in Angola and Sierra Leone to heal the wounds of war inflicted on young people.

WESSELLS: "we need to do our part to exercise leadership, to build and strengthen international norms against child soldiering and to protect children in all situations of armed conflict. And the U.S. public needs to give its support to the implementation of these laws."

NARRATOR: The United States and Somalia - a country with no functional government - are the only nations on earth not willing to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Recent media coverage has put the spotlight on the plight of child soldiers worldwide and helped stigmatize groups that exploit children in war.

However, these reports, often sensational in nature, rarely give television viewers a glimpse of the enormous challenges these shattered youths face as they lay down their guns and attempt to rejoin society.

The effort in Sierra Leone is instructive...

Imagine your house burned down. Your neighborhood destroyed. Your spouse or child shot to death. Now imagine the gunman is a child ... age 12.

Would you ... Could you put aside your anger and live together in the same community as the killer?

This is just one dilemma that faces the people of Sierra Leone as they try to rebuild in the wake of war.

Sierra Leone is a small former British colony about the size of South Carolina. It lies between Guinea and Liberia on the Atlantic coast of West Africa.

Part of the challenge of helping the some 3000 child combatants here lies in the fact that Sierra Leone is among the poorest countries in the world. Annual income is $150 a year. Average life span is only 40 years.

It would be hard for someone living in the United States to imagine the dire circumstances in Sierra Leone.

Decades of strife have torn the country apart. Its infrastructure is poorly developed. Its cities lack basic sanitation, roads, and communications.

Sierra Leone's recent troubles began in May 1997, when corrupt military leaders overthrew a fledgling democratically elected government, plunging the country into a state of chaos.

The capital city of Freetown was destroyed by fighting, looting and arson.

Military backed thugs burned this entire block as a warning to those who dared challenge the military junta.

MAN AND BURNED OUT HOUSE: "I begged them and begged for hours and they forced me with a gunshot to keep away from this area. So I went to my sister and explained the problem to her but before coming back everything was burned down."

NARRATOR: In February 1998, the military junta was toppled by a West African Peacekeeping force called ECOMOG. Although Freetown and a large portion of Sierra Leone were liberated, the ousted rebels have since killed, maimed and kidnapped thousands of civilians in remote villages and rural areas.

GIRL IN CAR: "When they entered Makeni they destroyed houses, looted and raped girls, destroyed shops. They called themselves 'Operation Non-Living Things.' What they meant by this was after looting they would kill people, mutilate them, cut their hands off, and they did very wicked things"

DRIVER: "Were there children with them?"

GIRL IN CAR: "Yes, there were children with guns. Yes they fired shots. For example, if they came across goats on the road they would shoot at them and stray bullets killed people. Furthermore, some were women, little girls, around the ages of 13 to 14. I feel very bad. I put myself in the shoes of these girls. I figure that they are with the rebels not by choice but because they are forced to be with them. And if they refuse to do anything they command them to do they would kill them."

NARRATOR: Today, children openly talk about their unnerving encounters with the rebels.

BOY IN WHITE SHIRT: those people went into our area they told us that we better join them most of us refuse because most of us are students. we told them that were supporting democracy, we want democracy in this country and we also told them that we want democracy restored in this country. they also told us that if you do not join us we are going to brutalize you. we told them no."

INTERVIEWER: Did some join the rebels?

BOY IN WHITE SHIRT: "well some of the children joined some did because they were harassed. some did because of food. some did because of money. some did because of certain reasons."

NARRATOR: At a school for former child soldiers on the outskirts of Freetown, young boys share their stories.

INTERVIEWER: How did you get involved in the war?

BOY: "I was on the farm when they came for me. They killed my father and mother and then took me along with them. I did a lot of work for them. I fetched water and did whatever I was asked to do."

INTERVIEWER: And you?

BOY IN STRIPED SHIRT: When the rebels made their attack they burned the place down. Only a few homes remained standing. They killed my grandfather who then the chief, captured us and took us to a town where we worked for them. We laundered their clothes, fetched water for them, dug. Sometimes they asked us to accompany them to dig casava we cooked and ate."

NARRATOR: The children in this school are lucky. They have escaped the turmoil for now.

In Sierra Leone, like many other developing countries, nearly half of the population are children under 18 years of age.

With little or no school system, a shattered economy, and ongoing internal conflict, many youths remain at high risk of becoming soldiers. A stable future for Sierra Leone, and many countries like it, depends on the rehabilitation of its children affected by war.

JONES: "If you gave these, gave people like this what they wanted which in the general perception is food, drugs and ammunition, you can recruit them into whatever political program you had and that is a very great potential danger."

NARRATOR: Professor Elderidge Jones is a former dean of Sierra Leone University and is one of the most respected commentators in Sierra Leone today.

JONES: "the danger is that this whole region um will become completely destabilized, or destabilized to a certain extent, but I think we have the means of recovery right now. But if some of these ills are not attended, if these uh children, we're talking about children but some of them in the course of the war have grown into young men, if all of these are not in a way re-socialized then we are looking at a situation of anarchy."

NARRATOR: As a child psychologist and Senior Coordinator for Refugee Children with the United Nations, Neil Boothby works to end the phenomenon of child soldiers.

BOOTHBY: "I think it's safe to say unless we're able to break the cycle of violence, unless we're able to focus on this teenage population specifically, that if things go wrong in the economy, if things go wrong in the political systems, it'll be the teenager who picks up the gun and starts the next cycle."

NARRATOR: The United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, works closely with a diverse group of 17 relief agencies, each with its own unique approach to helping the former child combatants of Sierra Leone.

Cornelius Williams is the UNICEF child protection officer for Sierra Leone.

WILLIAMS: "UNICEF is working with a network of agencies, all over the country, some of them are Christian agencies, some of them are Muslim agencies, some of them are just community based agencies, we're working with all these groups who are in contact with the families and communities to mediate between them and the children so that the children are placed back within these communities safely."

JONES: "The prospects are there with an organization for de-traumatizing, for counseling and re-socializing; the job can be done but it is an enormous job."

NARRATOR: An enormous job made more difficult by the fact that Sierra Leone, a country of nearly 5 million people, currently has only one trained child psychiatrist.

NASSIM: " If the number of children, which are associated with the war are being liberated either through demobilizations or through other ways, we do not have the resources to do it. We have the costs. The total case load is estimated to be around 3000 at the moment in the country which is directly associated with the fighting force."

NARRATOR: The job of identifying and demobilizing child combatants in Sierra Leone is made difficult by ongoing hostilities. Some children escape their rebel bosses, others surrender, or are captured.

BOY IN CAMP: "I met a priest and he brought me here. I have no idea whether the other boys who were with me are alive. Maybe they are dead."

INTERVIEWER: So you surrendered yourself to the priest?

BOY: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Is there anything you'd like to say?

BOY: I would like to go to school and be a great person in our country so that people in other countries will know that even Sierra Leone has educated people. "

NARRATOR: At checkpoints on major roads across Sierra Leone, West African coalition troops inspect vehicles for rebels and weapons. On this day soldiers caught a rebel youth as he tried to sneak past the checkpoint.

COL. KHOBE: it is a very unfortunate situation when you find that the gun is higher than the height of the man that is supposed to use it some of them were nearly 10 years.

NARRATOR: Colonel Maxwell Khobe is head of the West African military coalition in Sierra Leone. His troops have been forced to both fight against and care for child combatants.

COL. KHOBE: "what I have done is to pick them and to hand them over to UNICEF and some to the Catholic mission as appropriate. The other ones that have managed to come in from areas not directly involved I have taken them.. like yesterday I gave back eight to their parents I picked them from the prison, they were brought along with others, I went to prison and picked them and handed them over to their parents."

NARRATOR: For children who have been picked up by the military or have voluntarily surrendered, the road to recovery begins in temporary camps like this one. Here kids are given modest beds and meals while relief workers try to reunite them with family members.

RELIEF WORKER to CHILD SOLDIER: "And he's bigger than you or smaller than you?"

CHILD SOLDIER: "Bigger than me."

NARRATOR: It's here that the ex-combatants also receive preliminary treatment for health problems like drug addiction, malnourishment, sexually transmitted diseases, as well as therapy for emotional wounds.

WESSELLS: "Oftentimes, there's a tremendous amount of guilt over what one has done. This is typically accompanied by high levels of fear and anxiety over what will happen to one. In addition, there are traumas and exposure to traumatic experiences can produce flashbacks, sleep disturbances, withdrawal and isolation behavior and highly aggressive behavior in the form of acting out. So for these reasons, psycho social assistance is vital for helping our children make the transition back to civilian life."

NARRATOR: Perhaps the biggest hurdle is trying to place child soldiers back into communities that they may have harmed.

WESSELLS: "one has to work on the community end, to work with local chiefs or village leaders who oftentimes are quite fearful of young people. They may not want to receive former child combatants back, they may view them as trouble makers."

[Scene inside moving car]

DRIVER: have any of these

children come back?

GIRL: No.

DRIVER: They are still in the bush?

GIRL: Yes.

DRIVER: Would you accept them if they were to come back?

GIRL: Yes, because we know it is not the wish of these girls to be where they are now. We know that some of these people are unwilling captives. If they come back and change, we will simply accept them as our brothers and sisters."

NARRATOR: UNICEF and the other relief agencies work hard with communities to help them understand that the child soldiers are also victims of the conflict - not war criminals.

WILLIAMS:: "They were abducted, they were manipulated by adults to commit atrocities and now the community is angry against them. There is rising hatred against them. One of the things we have to do is raise the level of awareness that these children were victims so that they can be protected when they emerge from wherever they are hiding or whenever they are captured."

NARRATOR: Sometimes the relief workers themselves face resistance from community members who feel the child soldiers are receiving special treatment.

Father Momo, a priest who risked his life to rescue child combatants from the rebels, relates his experience.

FATHER MOMO: "when we try to resettle these children and they go back to their villages the people look at us differently, the people look at us as promoting the welfare of the one's that have caused the atrocities and the victims are left unattended and that's the basic problem we are facing."

NARRATOR: Krijn Peters, a Dutch researcher, went to Sierra Leone to document the stories of child combatants for his University in Holland. These are pictures of the children he encountered.

PETERS: "When people talk about child soldiers they either see them as victims - poor children they are indoctrinated or they see tee them as barbarians, wild kids, drug users and you cannot control them. And what we wanted to do is give them a human face just listen to what they are saying. People have to realize that - I mean - they act in some way like adults or they did commit a crime that are normally only committed by adults, but they are from the other end, they are still children. You cannot blame the child of twelve - thirteen years old for all that he did"

NARRATOR: For reintegration to work and wounds to heal, there has to be forgiveness by both the community and the child soldiers in many cases.

BOOTHBY: "the child has to come to some point in which he or she realizes that, that he was also a victim and forgive himself or herself.

And then the other act of forgiveness has to be community or collectively. And I think it's that twofold act of forgiveness -- internal forgiveness, but also communal or collective forgiveness. If you can bring those two things together, then I think the act of healing can at least begin."

NARRATOR: Another challenge for relief workers like Father Momo is adapting to new issues as they arise. For example, the low numbers of girls in the camps.

FATHER MOMO: "Well we found out that most - during the fighting - and we found out that even when the children were retrieved from the bushes the soldiers did not allow the girls to come out so they became almost women to these rebels..."

NARRATOR: Still another barrier to the recovery process is a perception that child combatants are "damaged goods" or a "lost generation".

BOOTHBY: "I think these, these generic terms, these, these stereotypes, these cliches that we use, such as 'lost generation', I think sometimes advocates use those terms to generate interest and public attention and, perhaps, some funding too, to address the issues.

But in doing so they write these kids off in ways that, that are not helpful. I mean they're, they're, the 'lost generation' is a misnomer. The kids in Sierra Leone are not a 'lost generation', the kids in Liberia are not a lost generation ---- unless we let them become lost with our inattention."

ERNEST: I want to reflect on the lives of the youths, because most of us we are captured and our life is miserable because we have no direction. But with the help of the NGO's coming to our aid I think we can make a better life. right now some of my friends are languishing around with no future and nothing to do and have nobody to take care of them."

BOOTHBY: "there's the mechanics of demobilization, you know: the sorting out of the kids, putting the guns down, transporting them back to the communities. But what we don't know very much about is once the kid goes home, what should we do? What kinds of education is most, most important? What kinds of vocational skills or training? What kinds of, you know, livelihood skills are needed? And I think that's the area which we, we have a, a lot further to go on. What do, what do we do once they put down their guns to ensure they don't pick it up again?"

NARRATOR: In Sierra Leone, as in all countries afflicted by youth violence, there is a need to eliminate the economic an social conditions that foster child soldiering.

At education centers like this one, relief groups make a special effort to provide teenage ex-combatants with basic education and skills training.

BOY IN STRIPED SHIRT: I mean you must find avenues so that the youths I mean should not be left behind .. because the youths are being neglected and we need to promote the youths in learning various trades and jobs so as to have a better future."

ERNEST: I feel happy because I think my life is going to change and I need the world to see us as a people who are in need and we have to change our lives and if you come to our aid then I think we will prove good citizens in the future.

NARRATOR: Skill training for girls is also beginning to take shape in Sierra Leone.

FATHER MOMO: "we are trying to get up a program called the Fatima House where we will go look for these girls where they will get trained in the dying home economics sewing and then where these girls will be of good use and they may resettle into the communities."

BOOTHBY: "So in the aftermath of these, these conflicts I think it's, it's very important to look at I think both the education and the economics of the situation. And by and large, whether they're in Liberia, whether they're in Sierra Leone, or other conflicts, want to be able to ensure some sort of independent productive life."

NARRATION: At a Catholic mission near the town of Makeni, former child combatants are given a place to stay, medical attention, and schooling. Bishop Biguzzi, head of the program, describes the reasons for helping these children.

BISHOP BIGUZZI: "Well they are special because they are in greater need. So we believe that anyone who is special need deserves special attention and particularly children that have been forcibly taken from their homes and uh they have been subjected to violence and of course they've committed atrocities themselves, but first of all they are the first victims of the violence they have received. So we thought that they deserve special attention and we concentrate on their own welfare and possibly recuperating them for their families and for society."

[Scene of former child soldier going home]

[FADE TO BLACK]

ADMIRAL CARROLL: To break the cycles of violence and to assist former child soldiers, there's a role for almost every one of us. There are tremendous needs that can be met through the actions of psychologists, medical personnel, non-government organizations, governments, and U.N. agencies. Along with 37 other military professionals, I recently sent a letter to President Clinton asking him to sign U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, and establish 18 as the minimum age for participation in armed conflict. Today only two countries in the world that are not parties to the treaty and America tragically is one of them. We need to do our part to exercise leadership, to build and strengthen a universal prohibition against child soldiering. Children should not be armed and sent into combat. Americans fully support laws which regulate child labor. We now need to support a law prohibits child soldiers. For America's Defense Monitor, I'm Admiral Eugene Carroll.

[PROGRAM ENDS]