Children are the new face of war
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Former child soldier, Ismael,
tells a high-level UN meeting about the horrors
of war and the difficulties of returning to a
normal life.
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7 May 2002, NEW YORK - Ismael was 14 years old and
in boarding school when he was recruited into an army
fighting in Sierra Leone's civil war. He was told that
his entire family had been killed and that he could
seek revenge against the killers by joining the fight.
He fought for three years. Seeing such things, he said,
made "that human thing that makes you care for
other people" disappear. He grew comfortable with
a gun. "The gun was the power in your hand,"
said Ismael at a UN Special Session on Children panel
discussion, 'Reclaiming our Children: The UN Responds
to the Situation of the Child Soldier'.
The killing eventually sickened him, said Ismael, now
20.
When the war ended, Ismael was placed in a UNICEF-supported
rehabilitation center. He made only slow progress there
at first. He defied his teachers and guardians. "We
thought that whoever was a civilian had no authority
over us," he said. Then, something clicked in his
mind.
"I don't know how it happened. I just started
going to school and listening to the teachers."
Ismael spent eight months at the rehabilitation center.
There he went to therapy - a process he said that brought
up enormous shame and guilt. Gradually he reintegrated
into society. Ismael now studies in the United States.
Ismael's plight of being forced into an army as a child
is anything but extraordinary. Some 300,000 children
in some 30 conflicts across the globe are fighting in
armies and rebel movements, the United Nations estimates.
"Tragically, children are the new face of war,"
said Kati Marton, Chief Outreach Officer of the Special
Representative of the Secretary-General for Children
and Armed Conflict and moderator of the panel.
At the panel, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced
a new UN initiative to prevent the recruitment of children
as soldiers. "For too long, the use of children
as soldiers has been seen as regrettable," said
Mr. Annan. The UN now wants to make it "intolerable,"
Mr. Annan stated. The UN Security Council has asked
Mr. Annan to submit by October a list of parties to
armed conflicts who use children. Mr. Annan said he
hoped that those who did so would be punished.
Preventing the recruitment of children is crucial,
said panel member Ibrahim Sesay, a representative of
the non-governmental organization Caritas Sierra Leone.
But, he added, the UN, in conjunction with UNICEF and
non-governmental organizations, also needs to intensify
its efforts to rehabilitate child soldiers.
Ismael, deeply committed to helping others who suffered
his fate, said, "I go through the pain of recounting
my life history to show that the kids who are forced
to become soldiers can be rehabilitated and live normal
lives."
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