IRIN Web Special on child soldiers

Reintegrated children

Alongside the newly demobilised child soldiers from Liberia, there were many Sierra Leonean youngsters in Kenema district who put down their own guns when Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war ended in 2001. Several had been returned to their families and successfully reintegrated to their communities.

Hawa Konneh, 15, was trained to shoot and was given a gun by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel movement, but was never made to fight. She and her mother found themselves trapped in rebel territory for nine years.

Hawa, a beneficiary of Sierra Leone's child soldier reintegration programme, now attends a primary school in Kenema town. The school receives additional learning materials because of her.

"We give some support to the child [ex-combatants] but more so, we provide learning materials to the schools they attend," a UNICEF official told IRIN. The former child soldiers are also exempted from paying school fees.

Hawa and her mother, Fatou Konneh, were captured by RUF fighters who overran their village near Kailahun in eastern Sierra Leone soon after the war began in 1991.

Its entire population was rounded up and trained on the use of weapons. "But me and my mother and other women were not used to fight. We were told we would be called upon in the case of an emergency, but we never went to the battle field," she told IRIN.

They were not molested by RUF male fighters either. Hawa said she thought this was because some of her own relatives became RUF commanders "so we were protected".

Her father, Yankuba Konneh, who was separated from his family on the other side of the lines, said: "We started a new life upon their return. I felt it was my fault for failing to protect them so I took them back because we belong together."

He is taking a teaching course at the teachers training college in Kenema, while his wife is doing a computer course in the town.

Foday Fofana was one of the lucky ones. He was only 15 when he was captured by the RUF in 2001. He was forced to work for the rebels as a porter for three months, but managed to escape and shortly afterwards the RUF unit he was attached to demobilised.

Now aged 18 and studying in the final year of primary school, he said books, uniform, a school bag were his immediate needs. "I was very happy to be home and I am happy with my life today," Fofana told IRIN. "I would like to study hard and become a doctor," he said.

"I wept for the three months," Serray Kamara, Fofana's mother told IRIN. "I was depressed and confused, I longed for his return."

In some villages where Sierra Leonean child soldiers have returned, they have been made to undergo traditional cleansing rites to appease those they had wronged or the gods, a UNICEF official told IRIN.

In some of these ceremonies traditional healers sprinkle the children with concoctions believed to have cleansing powers. In some cases they are also prayed for in local churches after which they are welcomed into the community. "This increases the level of acceptance and the children feel more secure in the community," the UNICEF offical said.

However, he expressed concern about some instances where the host community insisted on former girl fighters undergoing female circumcision rites as part of the reintegration process.

Only eight percent demobilised

Relief workers said many girls were left out of Sierra Leone's disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programme. They estimated that only eight percent of those associated with combatants had come forward.

Many girls had simply opted to stay with their abductors, who had become their sexual partners, but an increasing number were being abandoned by these de facto "husbands." A UNICEF programme designed to identify these girls was started in May. "A new phenomena is coming up where their "husbands" - the ex-fighters are abandoning the girls or sending them away," one UNICEF official said. "These cases are quite common in Kailahun district."

Kailahun was one of the first districts to be taken over by the RUF and one of the last to be accessed by aid agencies in 2002 when the war ended.

One of the biggest problem faced by those trying to reintegrate 7,000 child soldiers from the Sierra Leone conflict is waning donor interest in the rehabilitation projects set up to prevent these kids from going back to the bush with a gun: donors now see the country as having moved out of an emergency phase into one of development and reconstruction.

The Community Education Investment Programme (CEIP), an initiative designed to enable separated children return to school, is one victim of this phenomenon. UNICEF's Executive Director Carol Bellamy said in July that it was in danger of stalling because of a serious shortfall in funding.

Some US $1.4 million was needed immediately and a further $2.5 million would be required in the "near future" if the critical re-education and re-training programmes were to be completed, she said. The courses were less than halfway through, she added.

The Sierra Leone government was, meanwhile, also concerned about the growing problem of street children in Freetown and the other main towns. Many of these were believed to be former child soldiers and other children separated from their families during the civil war who had missed out on the reintegration programme.

[ENDS]

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