CHILDREN-SIERRA LEONE: Kids in Distress

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Mar 27 1998 (IPS) - Hundreds of orphans and former child soldiers face an uncertain future in Sierra Leone as the reinstated civilian government looks for strategies and funds to rehabilitate and reintegrate children back into society.

“We have so far traced 140 unaccompanied children and they are sheltered in various homes across the country,” says Father Joseph Berton, coordinator of the Children Associated with War (CAW) Project.

CAW held a workshop this week in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown to educate the media, community leaders and policy makers on the plight of the country’s children following years of civil war and the nine-month ruled by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).

According to Berton, hundreds of children may be scattered in the bush or they are still being held by remnants of the junta’s forces as hostages in areas where the AFRC and rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) are still holding out.

Sierra Leone’s ousted junta leader Johnny Paul Koroma is in hiding in the eastern Kono district, which according to reports, has been turned into “killing grounds”. Civilians are fleeing the area.

Berton says that the Nigerian-led ECOMOG troops have captured child soldiers in their mopping up exercise. “Seven of the child combattants were recently handed over to us by ECOMOG(the West African Peacekeeping Force) as prisoners of war and they too are sheltered and undergoing trauma healing,” Berton said.

An earlier attempt in 1992 to demobilise child soldiers met with some success, because of the then military National Provisional Ruling Council’s (NPRC) cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Under this programme, more than 500 child soldiers were demobilised and encamped for technical or vocational training, and eventual reintegration into society.

“The whole venture was thwarted by the coup of May 25, 1997 and the emergence of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, from the bush, to take part in the illegal military AFRC junta,” Berton says.

Soon after the AFRC came to power, RUF child soldiers visited the camps and lured away many of the children with money and drugs.

When tension heightened between ECOMOG and the military junta, the AFRC began to recruit more and more children into its ranks. According to unconfirmed reports, more than 100 child soldiers who were armed and placed on the frontline were killed during ECOMOG’s onslaught on Freetown in February to oust the junta.

Children who survived the war are now undergoing trauma healing at various camps and homes. In Wellington, east of Freetown, children are being trained in arts and crafts, and carpentry. Those willing to go to school are given basic lessons in english and arithmetic.

The Kids In Distress Project, which receives funds from Christian Children’s Fund (CCF), UNICEF and the Ministry of Social Welfare, also has provided trauma healing and counselling to the children.

“We have been encouraging them to tell stories of the past, discouraging them from wanting to go back to old habits like drugs, murder and gambling,” says Marcella Boyle, a counsellor.

The task before groups like Kids In Distress and others is not easy. Fourteen-year-old Gabriel Kamara, who fought with the RUF, still only thinks of the gun as his ticket through life.

“I have fought in the RUF ranks since 1994 and I can confidently use an AK-47 assault rifle. When I grow up, I want to become a regular soldier,” Kamara says.