War Affected Children Local and Global Concerns1

Lecture2 (followed by Q&A session) given on February 23, 2007, 3:15 4:45, at the conference3 Human Rights and Social Justice: Setting the Agenda for the UN Human Rights Council, February 23-25, 2007, which formed part of the Human Rights Action Week at the University of Winnipeg (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada).
Speakers (in order of first appearance): (1) Dr. Tony Hoffman (abbr. TH, below), Lecturer, Psychology, University of California Santa Cruz; (2) Adrian Bradbury (AB), Co-Founder of GuluWalk, Founder and Director of Athletes for Africa; (3) Dr. Lynn McBrien (LMB), Assistant Professor, Psychological and Social Foundations College of Education, University of South Florida; (4) Senator General Romo Dallaire (RD). (Names of the students asking questions (Q&A session) not included in this summary, but can be discerned on the recording.)

(of audio recording4)

In his introduction, TH describes multiple aspects of the horrific conditions faced by war-affected youth, with the grim (post-Cold War) statistics including the deaths of over two million children. Examples of how children (girls in particular) are victimized more than others both during and after war are given, including the massive current deployment of child soldiers (one of the main topics) in present armed conflicts: There is no more sophisticated low-technology weapon system in the world today than the child soldier (RD.) We also learn that in the infamous Rwanda conflict, the bulk of the killings were done by youths, by machete. Equally disturbing are the facts laid forth pertaining to the impotency of first world nations in alleviating this plight of millions. Not only are the efforts extremely limited in time, at the
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SUMMARY

Details on the speakers, location etc. obtained from http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/hrsj-index Referred to as workshop in the conference blog at http://blog.uwinnipeg.ca/hrsj/

At http://www.archive.org/details/human_rights_and_social_justice copyright-free recordings (and streaming audio) of the full set of conference sessions are available for download.

4 Visit http://www.archive.org/details/war_affected_children to download the copyright-free recording or to listen in streaming audio format to this lecture.

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level of the individual, but also in scope and sometimes ridiculously so. Thus, a child soldier often a highly experienced individual easily realizes that there is little to be gained from putting down his or her arms in order to be trained by an NGO to be a cobbler in a nation where few people wear shoes. The development of therapeutical tools has been embarrassingly slow. For instance, it took a long time before children and adults were put in distinct demobilization programs and no work has yet been done on what RD calls the Child Soldier Leader: the child soldier leader can undermine everything else we are doing if not identified. The tools employed can become inefficient or even do damage when the respect for pluralism on the part of the countries providing aid is not reflected also in those processes themselves. Local healing practices and spiritual dimensions (AB) need to be respected, for instance. Child soldiers often become subject to social stigmatization in their home countries and frequently face ethnic discrimination after obtaining refuge elsewhere. Ignorance contributes to discrimination and media fail to remedy such ignorance by giving priority to shallow entertainment. Few solutions are presented, but RD feels that rehabilitative (as opposed to punitive) juvenile courts could be of value and that schools would be the ideal vehicle in situ for channelling aid to children; schools provide not only knowledge but also social structures as well as a means of monitoring the pupils. Pessimism is explicitly voiced by some of the speakers. Yet, there is an increased interest in these issues and RD says: I am not pessimistic, because there is an NGO movement. If the NGO could coalesce and mature [it] will become the supra capability that will influence public opinion and governments. Additional topics are touched upon in passing, such as the exacerbation of conflict by poverty and the novel character of many present-day conflicts. Such conflicts, due to friction within countries, can potentially occur in many places, and not necessarily far from ourselves. Were into a whole different scenario and what is so gruesome is that the people within the countries are doing it to themselves. scale of human destruction that we have rarely seen in history. (RD.) Manlio Giordano June 26, 2009 Page 2 of 2