Mother and children in therapeutic feeding center in Makeni Sierra-Leone
Child in therapeutic feeding center, Makeni SL.
Boys on the market Makeni S.L.
Market Makeni S.L.
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Childcombattants
or Child soldiers in Sierra-Leone. By
Paul Sterk, child- and family-psychologist and psychiatric social worker.
In December 1997 I was doing an assessment on
psychotrauma related problems in the Makeni and Tonkolili region in Sierra Leone.
I found a lot of activities going on this subject. The time I was there a
lot of initiatives and activities were starting on the special targetgroups: Children
associated with War, the ex-child combatants who were going to be demobilised and
released by the RUF (rebellion united front).
Many NGO’s and local organisations were making plans to help these
children. Many meetings are held on this subject and many plans are made.
During my visits in Makeni region I ran into much more information about
the CAW problems. To share this information and my findings with others, I decided to
write this discussion paper.
Caritas Makeni is the biggest organisation on welfare in Makeni. Apart from
the project on trauma-healing, they are involved in hospitals and this moment they are
very much involved in giving aid to the child combatants of the RUF. This is considered to
have the highest priority. The bishop of Makeni is supporting this group very much and is
a go-between in the handing over of these children after they are demobilized..
The childprotection program, as this program is called, is trying to take
care of 169 children in Makeni barracks by giving food, clothing and medical support. They
also give education, sports and organise trauma healing sessions by organising roll-plays
and drama sessions. Caritas is also trying to disarm the children. Not all the children in
the camp are ex-combatants, many are unaccompanied children who never were a soldier. They
had to carry goods, help as a servant or were concubines to the soldiers.
In Mile-91 RUF has another camp were 400 children live, Caritas is having
access to this camp.
The children are reported to be very traumatised.
Many aggression and unsociable behaviour. Some of them are badly injured and have badly
cured wounds in there face.
I saw one child with big machete-scars in the face. His jaw was cut as well
by this machete-cut and was not healed in a proper way. He suffered from wound infection
as well. An other boy was shown to me who had a hernia his scrotum was as big as an
football, you could feel the intestines in it. Two other boys had badly healed scars in
their face and back. The problem is that they have no medical assistance or medicines.
After discussion, Caritas told us they will take care of this problem. (Dec 16 the boy
with the hernia had his operation)
Caritas has 5 social workers in the barracks who are given a little salary.
Some others are voluntaries who get food for work. Linked to the pastoral centre (1 mile
out of the camp) are two centres for an estimated 67 unaccompanied children. The St.
Francis and our Lady of Fatima.
The bishop of Makeni is involved in the release of the child combatants. He
describes the behaviour of the children as "bush", violence, many threats to
each other and very suspicious. The childworkers in the barracks work with the children,
those are the activities they are doing:
- give food/ health / clothing
- Sport and video (non-Rambo ones)
- Drama and plays ( play their own RUF-actions after which discussions)
- School education
- Try to interact/reintegrate with local youth. (soccer games etc.)
- In an indirect way trying to gather information over the home village to
find the parents.
The teachers are said to be trained in trauma healing and reconciliation.
They have officially consultation possibilities with Mrs. Taylor (the senior consultant of
the traumahealing program in MakenI), in practice this is not possible because Mrs. Taylor
is at this moment not employed by Caritas. Not all the teachers did receive a training in
trauma healing, the say they are still on the waitinglist for the next training.
Ibrahim Koroma is the headteacher at the St. Josheps 2ndairy school in
Makeni and lives in the barracks for 12 years now. He lives with the children and is
supervising the children social workers. He finds most children very traumatised and have
need for special attention. For now they are only working on correcting behaviour problems
and re-socialising the children again.
About
reunification problems:
I heard some stories about parents who had been traced, refused to have
their children back at home, the bishop thinks most parents do want their children back,
but make a lot of trouble now (pretending that they cannot handle the children) in trying
to get some extra funds or facility’s for the community with them. ("Children
can become income; we’ve created an culture of dependence" )
Visit to the RUF barracks in Makeni:
I accompanied Mr. Ibrahim Koroma on a half day visit in the barracks. A
week later I spend two days in the barracks with the children and one of the social
workers/teachers. They showed me the barrack were the unaccompanied children get some
education. It is a bare room with only one bench in it, so only 6 children can sit. The
rest (30 at that time) had to sit on the ground.
They have one blackboard and nearly no stationairies. Sometimes the bishop
sends some stationairies and he promised to send some school-benches.
The children get lessons in mathematics, language(English), "social
awareness" and religion.
I observed some groups of children, in the age of 4 to 16 who were (most of
them) very enthusiastic. The had lots of fun together and were very attached to each other
and the teachers. every 30 minutes or so they had a little "attention-game" to
draw attention again or get back the concentration. This game includes some physical
movements and made a lot of fun. All children have concentration problems. The children cling to each other. Some told me that they got the biggest support
from their friends who suffered the same.
The children in the group were ex-combatants, adopted children and
unaccompanied children. I spoke to some of them in private:
- One girl of 14 years old is in the camp for 2
years now. She and her mother ran into an ambush by Kamajo, the mother was killed after
being raped, she was raped as well and left alone. RUF-people found her and took her to
live in the barracks. She knows where her village is but the RUF is afraid to send her
back because this is Kamajo area and if they find out that she has lived in the RUFcamp
she will be in trouble. The girl likes to live in the camp, has many friends and shares
some problems with girls who had the same experience.
- A boy 12 years old. Lives in the barracks for 9
months now. He has been a RUF combatant for 2 years. His parents came to see him but were
afraid to take him back because of the Kamajo.
- One boy, age 14, has been in the army
for 6 years (as the teacher told). He talked a lot but there was no coherence in what he
said. I would describe his behaviour as chaotic/ manic, near to psychotic.
- One boy 12 years old, lives with a RUFfamily for 4
years now after the found him in the bush. The family adopted him. Now the family of the
boy is traced but the RUFfamily doesn’t want to let the boy go. They are attached to
the boy. The teachers try to find a way to convince the family to let the boy go home.
- I talked with the boy I described earlier with the
machettescars in his face. The boy (14) was in a lot of pain.
He had not been speaking for 8 months, now he starts to speak a little. it takes a long
time to get answers. The boy seems depressed and is very worried about his wounds. He does
not want to speak about what exactly happened. The teacher said that the boy is starting
to talk with other children now.
- A girl of 8 I observed in the classroom. She had a
lot of fun and was very eager to learn. She likes living in the camp, has a lot of
friends. She lost her family when the village she lives in was attacked. She was adopted
by a RUF family.
I went to 8 houses were children/adolescents live in
groups. Those are the houses were the (soon to be released?) child-combatants live. They
live in groups of 8 to 10 with a family. Officially they are still under command of the
commandant. They don’t wear uniforms or weapons. They help a little around the house,
go fishing and hang around. As long as they are not officially demobilised, they are not
allowed to go to school or having a job. They didn’t speak much when I was there.
They behaved as if they were shy, I don’t think they are. I got the impression they
were more uneasy with my visit, and didn’t know how to react. Some of them may be
depressed as well. Most of them had plans to go to school after they were allowed to go.
One has a little enterprise as a fisherman. He sells the fish he catches, to the families
in the barracks.
All the adults I have spoken to are volunteers to live with those children.
Many of them do this from a religious background.
The child-animators who work in the barracks, asked for a workshop on how
to work with those children. They are never trained on the subject of trauma, they feel
uncertain and eager to learn more about what to do or not to do.
Expected problems in
interimcare:
After observation and talking to the children, I formed an opinion on what
to expect after those children are released from the barracks, are send to interim care
and sometimes family.
I expect some of the children are not capable to go back to a normal family
life without a special training. Most of the children are emotional deprived for a long
period. They have to learn to trust some adult people again. They must learn to accept and
recognise affection and love.
I expect some children to start misbehave when they come to their family,
just to find out if they are really welcome. "Prove to me that you will not send me
away, show me how welcome I am". (Same proces you find with some emotional deprived
children)
More than a few children will have borderline problems and will need
special attention and training, many parent will not be able to handle those children with
borderline personality.
The peergroup in the barracks have been functioning
as an SELFHELPGROUP for those children. As long as they are in this group they will feel
safe and (in a way) happy. The moment we get them out of this group, some will
decompensate or will find out that their copingskills (which seemed very effectfull in
their peergroup) are no effective copingskills anymore. In the barracks every child is
special in what they have suffered or have done. At home they are very special and draw
special attention.
Most of the copingbehavior of the children in the barracks has an objective
to cover-up all the terrible things. It is easy if everybody does the same, it will not be
effective behaviour in their home-village.
Because there is no effective psycho-therapeutic referral system in the
country, "covering-up" is indeed something the children have to learn, not only
in the barracks, but also in other situations.
In an interim care program there must be a screening facility and team
which will screen the children. (a team must have different input from a: social worker,
psychologist, psychiatric knowledge (psychologist or ps. nurse).
- if they are ready to go to their family direct or if they (the children
AND the family) need some training before reunification.
- some children are to mature to live in a family as an child again. They
must go and live in a family replace house with a small group of children and a
care-giver, fosterparent.
- some children will need to go to foster-family homes, if their own
parents are not capable to handle with this problems.
I expect that if some children go home to early they will become drop-outs,
reenlist or form street-gangs. (learn from Liberia)
Needs of the children in
interim-care centres:
- Roll-modelling.
- Identity experimenting (roll-playing) from a soldier to a
carpenter-to-be.
- Learn to trust and accept, love and affection from adults.
- Find new goals in life, find back some self esteem and respect for self
and others.
- Recognition and acknowledgement of the things that happened to them or
they did, were not their own choice
- Coping skills training.
- Resocialisation training.
- Programs for borderline children.(M. Linehan ea.)
- Programs for children with drugs abuse.
Factors which will be important in the screening and will decide on the
duration of time necessary to stay in interim care are:
- Impact of events.
- Age and extent of "adult"-behaviour.
- Capability of social behaviour.
- Expectations of family and possibility of family counselling. (readiness
from parents and availability of counsellors)
Goals of the interim care must be:
- Tracing and reunification
- Reintegration/resocialising.
- Use of tools like trauma-healing, traditional healing and purification.v
- Screening on individual level, what the best place after interimcare is.
(reunification to extended family, foster families, foster homes, care-facilities).
Problems foreseen are:
- The "youth-social workers" who were trained to do the registration
of the children didn’t understand the children and are not longer welcome in the
barracks. They were not trained well. (those are not the childsocial workers, but people
trained by the ministery of social wellfare to to the registration of the childsoldiers)
- The child-animators who work in the barracks at the moment are not
trained enough, if they become the workers in the interim-care they need more training.
- Children are promised money and other goods if they will disarm, those
promises will arise false expectations.
- "Drop-outs" if interimcare is not satisfying the needs of
children. (re-enlisting, streetgangs)
- Reunification without preparing the community or family will cause
failure.
- One have to find something to give in exchange for lose of : status,
peergroup-support, selfhelpgroup support, independence, etc. etc. to the ex-combatants.
- Tracing of families is not computerised, the link between region’s
will be a bottleneck.
- Funds to run programs as started by various organisations and NGO’s.
- Villages and families will expect money for taking care of the
ex-combatants.
Some reports on the subject of CAW I went
through:
- CAW report: CAW and ADRA
- Position paper on psycho-Social care: C.C.F
- Proposal reconciliation and trauma healing. Caritas Makeni
All the reports , proposals, position papers and plans have a focus on
training of trainers and important people in the communities. Every plan is focusing on
community-based responsibility.
I spoke to most of the responsible persons from organisations. All the
people I spoke to are very well aware of the problems and are very capable and informed on
this subject. The problem is that everybody is planning on community training of trainers
and no plan is really taking care of how things will work in the communities after that.
There is no support or follow-up. The plan are hoping that the community will take the
responsibility and start to work with the knowledge they bring. As I found out with the
Caritas projects, the animators on community level are very willing to take action, but
can not afford to work on their own costs. They need support with goods and means.
Transport is a big problem.
In my opinion all the plans and projects are not taking care of this
"bottleneck". Next to that there is hardly any knowledge on the plans of the
other circuits.
All the organisations representatives agree that projects must have a focus
on community-based activities. The combined focus of all organisations must be :
"To make programs get started on grass-root-level, not only on
trainers of trainers-level."
As plans work out as all the organisations have
planned, the community animators and elderly can expect the next training’s offered
to them:
- training for animators on reconciliation and trauma healing (caritas)
- family and community mediation
- training for child-guidance and supervisors
- peace-education and reconciliation
- training for community leaders, how to influence community opinion
- community sensitisation on CAW/child combatants
Next to this there will be training’s on the subject of agriculture /
primary health awareness etc.
Maybe this list will make clear that there must be some co-operation and
consideration between all the organisations. The good thing however
is, that a lot of organisations are willing to do something and, to my opinion, from a
very professional background and knowledge about the problems.
It would be a good idea to have co-ordinators on district level for all
projects. This co-ordination must:
- Co-ordinate all programs in time-schedule.
- Find possible ways to integrate the different projects on
village/grassroots level.
- Stimulate and facilitate co-operation of different projects.
- Monitor implementation of all projects on grassroots level.
Preference for having an NGO to take care of this task.
Some abbreviations used by the authority:
DCS demobilised children
IDPI internally displaced persons in institutions
IDPF internally displaced persons in fosterhouses.
DIC drop in centre
IDPC internally displaced persons in camps
UAC unaccompanied children
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