Part 4: Child soldiers' roles and the impact of conflict Narrator: Because they are physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers, making them attractive to armed groups willing to use them. From the children's perspective, the combination of guns and inexperience leads them down a dangerous path. Shaka Ssali: You had power. You were able to assert yourself. And you felt good about it. You got those kinds of feedbacks from some of your peers. In this particular case of course, you're talking about a situation where kids find themselves very, very close to losing their lives. Because it's really the difference between life and death. Whereas watching a cinema and what have you, even though I would look at characters who appear to die in one scene and then later somehow they seem to have reincarnated or something, it always puzzled me. It was like death was not permanent – it was temporary.
Narrator: Children are uniquely vulnerable because of their emotional immaturity. They are easy to manipulate into doing just about anything asked of them, and can be drawn into violence that they are too young to resist or understand.
Thanks to the many technological advances in weaponry, lightweight automatic weapons are simple to operate, often easy to find and can be used by children just as easily as adults.
Shaka Ssali: When kids in armed groups, of course they are used for example to carry luggage belonging to rebels or armed forces. In some cases they are used to do some cooking. They are used to do even some more dangerous assignments like spying, for example. Because for a kid, spying is a very easy thing, because a lot of times the enemy are not conscious of the fact that these young kids who are 10 years old, 13 years old can actually be very dangerous, very devastating. In other cases they are even deployed in the front line, they actually become what some might characterize as cannon fodder, you know.
Kids go through a lot, really, and they are able to do a lot of those things because unlike adults, they don't seem to really understand what fear is, or even to experience fear sometimes, by the way. You don't weigh the consequences, for example. You don't have that luxury and so for some reason you tend to think that you are invincible really. Nothing can happen to you. These kids sometimes also can access drugs, alcohol. If a kid is on drugs like marijuana, what do you expect? I mean, they can follow anything they are asked to do.
Part 5: Efforts at rehabilitation of child soldiers Narrator: Many aid groups and human rights organizations have taken on the challenge of helping former child soldiers lead normal lives. The process presents many challenges.
Shaka Ssali: I think first of all, they need what you would call social, psychological counseling. In a lot of cases, a lot of these kids, most of these kids don't have parents. So they pretty much don't have really a home. So they look at the government or the army as a sort of, I guess the moral equivalent of their home.
Narrator: Some child soldiers have been forced to commit atrocities against their own family or neighbors. When the conflict is over, they are outcasts in their own communities.
In some countries, former child soldiers have access to rehabilitation programs to help them locate their families, go to school or receive job training. But there are many children with no access to such programs – and with no way to support themselves. Without resources and assistance, they remain vulnerable to the lure of armed groups.
For those fortunate enough to start on the road to rehabilitation, programs provide a place to start. But beyond the efforts delivered through institutions, there is the emotional and psychological element of reintegration. The process of reintegration must recognize that each child is different with individual abilities. For this, human interaction, leadership and the establishment of trust is the foundation for success. Ssali explains the importance of role models and how programs can help promote emotional and psychological healing.
Shaka Ssali: The best way to do it of course is generally bringing what I would call positive role models. Bringing someone for example who was a kid soldier at one point or another; someone with whom they can identify with. Someone that can help to walk them through the journey that he went through up to the point when he became sufficiently rehabilitated and came to a point where he acquired skills and the tools of life, and combined together that helped to somehow liberate him from the previous problems. The fact that that person had a certain degree of discipline, was passionate and committed about changing his life into a more useful member of society, has been able to do it … like some people say, if you want to write a book, who really would be the best teacher? I guess it would have to be someone who has already written a book. One of the ways to do that is to set up certain workshops, really. Where kids and adults and what have you can participate and debate, they can express different perspectives and all that kind of stuff and in the process, kids can begin to get a sense as to what it is to be different from what they were doing previously.
Part 6: The role of governments in rehabilitation of child soldiers Narrator: A number of countries in Africa — where the problem of child soldiers is greatest — have made the effort to reintegrate former child soldiers into society. Shaka Ssali: And so governments in some countries like Uganda, for example, like Sierra Leone, like Liberia, they have tried to integrate them into society. For those that have grown a little bit older, they have given them opportunities to join the regular armies in order to become useful members of those institutions. But they have also, on the other hand, opened up or built schools, actually, so that they can begin to pick up the ABCD's of life, go through primary schooling and move on to advanced levels, junior high school, and high school. And there are kids I have met actually, former child soldiers, who have actually been able to go up to university – became lawyers, became teachers, others became businesspeople.
Narrator: Education, especially primary schooling, is crucial for former child soldiers. Education leads not only to employment. It helps them to create a normal life, with structure and routine, where they can develop an identity other than that of the soldier. One difficulty is that former combatants may have fallen far behind in their schooling, and may be placed in classes with much younger children. Specific measures may be required to address these situations. For older children, effective education requires training in life-skills and vocational opportunity, helping to provide them with a sense of meaning and identity.
Shaka Ssali: I remember one day I was interviewing Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. We were talking about some of the kids who had now become soldiers in his army. He was complaining about how they had become very irresponsible, how they took too much to drinking, and as a result they were not able to be disciplined enough. So I asked him, I said Mr. President, you realize that these guys when they were in the bush with you, they were very, very young kids. So I asked him, I said did you have some kind of mechanism when you took power, a mechanism that was in place that would be in a position of helping some of these young kids who eventually have now become part of your traditional military establishment. And he said no, we did not have it. Then I said you shouldn't be surprised. The only thing they knew at one time when they were in the bush, the rules were that – what is demanded of you is to kill the enemy. And now you come back, you're part of a new arrangement, and now you are being told what was right yesterday, today, is wrong. Human beings are not like a computer keyboard where you just press, if want someone to kill, it kills, and then you press, you stop. It doesn't work like that. Narrator: The challenge for governments and civil society is to channel the energy, ideas and experience of youth into contributing to the creation of their new, post-conflict society. Some child soldiers find it difficult to relinquish the idea that violence is a legitimate means of achieving objectives. This is particularly true where poverty and injustice remain after the fighting has stopped. But the impact of war on youth is not only a phenomenon in poor countries. Ssali reminds us that America has had its own experience.
Shaka Ssali: I went to school in the United States with some guys who had actually been very, very young, had been drafted and gone to fight in Vietnam, had come back to America and had some of them ended up in fact sleeping on the streets. Some people actually being affected very severely.
