UN

War children

On June 5th, a symposium was held in New York, promoted by the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the UN, its Path to Peace Foundation, AVSI (Association of Volunteers in International Service), and the Special Representative of the United Nations for children and armed conflict. The Pope’s message and the testimony of some former child soldiers

by MARCO BARDAZZI

The Pope’s blessing permeated a large lecture hall at the UN and rested on the now-smiling faces of Jimmy, Mimoza, Maria, and Agnes. Their eyes, forced in the years past to look at scenes that have made them grow up too fast, were now trained on an audience of 700 people, among them many protagonists of international diplomacy, who had come to listen to their testimony as “war children.”
The UN building in New York, too often utilized for endless and unconstructive discussions on empty theories, last June 5th was given the chance to dive into reality. A constructive provocation, summed up in the title of the symposium promoted by the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the UN and its Path to Peace Foundation and by AVSI, together with the Office of the UN Special Representative for children and armed conflict: “Children in Armed Conflict: A Responsibility for Everyone.” This is a painfully timely topic, in a world where 300,000 children are fighting right now in 41 countries.
A letter from the Pope arrived to reinforce the impact of the message of the meeting, after he had two days earlier launched a blessing from the Vatican at the end of Sunday Mass. John Paul II prayed in Rome “for the children involved in armed conflict of every type, victims of an absurd violence,” and, in anticipation of the meeting at the UN, he invited the international community “to increase their efforts to protect and rehabilitate those who live in such dramatic conditions.” These concepts were taken up again by the Pope in his special message to the participants in the symposium, read by the Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See, Archbishop Renato Martino: “The memory of the children who have been killed,” John Paul II wrote, “and the continued suffering of so many others commit us to sparing no efforts to bring conflicts and wars to an end, and to leaving no stone unturned to help their young victims return to a healthy and dignified life.”

Jimmy’s story
Some have succeeded in returning to dignified lives, thanks also to the work of AVSI and the many other groups and individuals working in the countries torn apart by conflict. Pre-eminent among them is the work of Fr Berton with the children of Sierra Leone. Jimmy Tamba is one of these. For the audience of ambassadors, diplomats, and members of international organizations, he recounted the long journey that has brought him far from the guerrilla warfare in his country, Sierra Leone. Kidnapped by the militia when he was 13 years old and attending school, he lived in the jungle for three years, was turned into a soldier, killed, and grew up surrounded by killing. Now he is 18, and is inevitably marked forever by that experience–which ended only when he managed to run away from a rebel camp–but he is putting back together what is good in his young life, starting over from that. Among the good things, there is his encounter with Fr Giuseppe Berton.
Along with AVSI, Fr Berton is rebuilding a future for hundreds of young lives. As a good, pragmatic missionary, when the moderator of the debate at the UN, French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, offered him the microphone, Fr Berton extensively outlined the work accomplished in these years. “I am deeply worried,” he told the audience, “because long-term programs are needed for the children. Emergency intervention is a good thing, but we need to build by looking far ahead. The perception of good and evil which these children had has been destroyed. They need an environment of peace where they can be helped.”

An open challenge
These words echo those of the Pope, who spoke of a “challenge that goes out to individuals and organizations, and in short to the entire international community,” which was to help children become builders of peace. Wars unfortunately have always taught a bitter lesson, which was recalled to the assembly by Olara Otunu, Assistant to UN Secretary Kofi Annan, who has responsibility for children and armed conflict: “Whoever is abused today will be an abuser in the future, in a vicious circle of violence.”
This is true, unless he finds along his path someone capable of embracing him as a person and sharing the challenge of his destiny, as happened, for example, to Mimoza Gojani. She told the UN audience her story as a teenager marked by the horrors of the war in Kosovo. “When you think about war, you think about something terrible, but living it is much worse,” said Mimoza, who had been stuck in Pristina, in the midst of hostile Serbs, during the worst days of the war. And yet, the message which the 17-year-old Kosovar student gave to the world’s diplomats was centered completely on optimism for the future, thanks to the encounters she has had in recent years–including one with AVSI volunteers involved in various projects in Kosovo–“which gave me the criteria for judging reality.” A similar experience was lived by Agnes Lilian Ocitti (see box).

Appointment in September
The symposium, officially attended by 30 permanent missions to the UN (from the United States to Bangladesh), came at a crucial moment for the future of policies concerning children. The three hours of discussion, interspersed with the projection of a touching Canadian documentary on war children and a performance by a children’s chorus from the Einstein School of Manhattan, yielded important indications that will immediately be put to the test. “In September,” the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Harri Holkeri, recalled, “we shall have a chance to see concretely what world leaders intend to do for children, at the special general assembly dedicated to childhood.” In 1990, the World Summit on Children drew up an outline for future action, and now, eleven years later, the leaders of the world will meet in a Special Session in the United States, September 19th to 21st, to evaluate what has been done in this decade and what remains to be done.
The symposium promoted by the Nuncio and by AVSI preceded by a week the start of preparation for the September assembly, and set the pitch for international diplomacy by putting it face-to-face with the stories of children and the witness of those working “in the field.” And perhaps it is no coincidence that the session of preparatory work opened, in the days following, precisely with a call to order to the international diplomatic community: Queen Rania, the young and beautiful new Palestinian sovereign of Jordan, took the podium of the General Assembly and accused the countries of the world of doing “very, very little for children,” limiting themselves to “declarations of principle” only rarely followed up by facts.
Facts, instead, almost always come before words among those working in Africa and the other difficult areas in the world. The focus on war children, as Archbishop Martino stressed, has been in this sense a chance “to highlight some of the many initiatives set up by the Church and religious organizations all over the world in favor of the children affected by war. I was struck when Mr Olara Otunu told me recently that, almost always, the first people he meets when he visits war zones are religious: priests and sisters who devote themselves to assisting the children who are victims of adult hatred and are forced to take part in conflicts that deprive them of their freedom and innocence.”

Agnes’ Story
BY ANDREA COSTANZI

19 years old, a native of Kitgum in northern Uganda, she belongs to the Acholi tribe and is the fifth of two brothers and seven sisters. She is one of Sister Rachele’s girls ( see Traces, Vol. 1, No. 3 1999) and is traveling around the world to tell her story in places such as Nairobi, Pompei, and New York…

October 10, 1996. Agnes was kidnapped by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army, along with 138 schoolmates from St Mary’s College in Aboke. With the blessing of Sr Alba, the school’s headmistress, two teachers, Sr Rachele Fassera and Bosco, followed the group’s tracks and knelt before the rebel commander to beg their liberation. Agnes was one of the thirty girls who were not freed. “I remained a prisoner for three months. Together with other girls, I was forced to take part in the killing of a girl who had tried to escape, clubbing her to death. Then the rebels carried out a propitiatory rite, tracing a cross with ashes on our hearts, our shoulders, and our backs.”
During their captivity, an appeal was made by the Pope on their behalf. The commander was furious. “He asked us why the whole world was talking about the Aboke girls. Did we think we were different from the other prisoners? He said that we were soldiers and we had to forget about being teachers, doctors, or whatever else we had in mind.”
The day she was supposed to be deported into Sudan, Agnes gathered her courage and managed to escape with a friend. She asked the army to let her be taken immediately to Aboke, to embrace Sr Rachele and Sr Alba. Then she returned to Kitgum.
“I arrived home on the evening of January 13, 1997. My mother was unable to speak. She said she thought her daughter was already dead. No words could express our feelings.”
Agnes decided to go back to her studies in Aboke, even though many of her classmates had moved to other schools for security reasons. The college reopened on March 31, 1997. “I liked school and I knew that they would treat us well. It is a very welcoming environment.”
The doors of the convent in Aboke are always open so that the students can meet the sisters at any time. “Sr Rachele and Sr Alba asked us to pray all together for the release of our classmates every day. My friend Josephine escaped from Sudan in April 1997. Ten of us in all have managed to come back.”
Today Agnes is fully recovered. Even if a wound remains open… “Despite the love of my family and the sisters and the therapy of a psychologist, I have long been haunted by the nightmare of that girl’s killing. I could not help feeling guilty. I considered myself a criminal, even if I knew that I had been forced to do that act and had no choice. Sharing this drama has helped me in time to recover my serenity.” During the school vacations, Agnes started meeting with a group of AVSI volunteers and the students of Kitgum High School. Back in Aboke, she met with some of the youths from the Kampala community who were presenting the GS (CL Student Youth) exhibition on freedom. “I found a strong correspondence between what they were saying and my experience.” The sisters encourage the girls to read Traces; at St Mary’s College now there are always two copies in the library. Agnes decided to participate in School of Community, with a great desire to be helped to understand more. In May, with about twenty kids her same age, she took part in the first CL university (CLU) vacation held in Uganda, on the theme of peace. “Reading and meditating on the words of Fr Giussani, I began to understand that peace is not just the absence of war…”
Since the beginning of the year, Agnes has worked for AVSI in the Kitgum district, in a psycho-social support program for victims of war, kidnapping, and trauma. “Even though this is work, giving support to other people is helping me to share my experience with those who have suffered like me and those who are still suffering.”
In September, Agnes will start attending classes in the Faculty of Law at Makerere University in Kampala. She wants to become a lawyer, to help and protect her people. “My heart has a demand for justice, first and foremost for my twenty friends who are still in the Sudan.”