Child soldier asks who will care for Africa's battle-scarred youth

The following article was published by the l'Agence France-Presse (AFP) and features Talking Drum Studio - Sierra Leone's cub reporter, Stephen Swankay.

CAIRO, May 29 (AFP)

Stephen Swankay should normally be playing football with friends, not letting out a heart-rending cry, at the ripe age of 12, on his experiences fighting in Sierra Leone's brutish civil war. "I am here to recount the plight of Sierra Leone's children and my experience during the country's war," the frail boy said Tuesday at a Cairo summit on the future of Africa's children, co-hosted by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

"In 1997, the (Revolutionary United Front) rebels captured me and many of my friends. I was trained as a fighter, and for two years, I fought with a Kalashnikov. In 2000, I was freed," he said in broken English assisted by interpreters to an audience of representatives from 53 African nations, including 16 first ladies.

The RUF, which still controls diamond rich enclaves in Sierra Leone's north, earned a reputation for ferocity -- hacking off civilians' limbs, raping women and enlisting en masse child soldiers -- as it battled successive governments in Freetown since 1991.

"They taught me to torch houses and some children even killed their parents," Swankay said about the rebels, currently engaged in a tentative UN-sponsored disarmament initiative and peace talks to end the conflict, which has left 200,000 dead in 10 years.

"Since I was freed, I have not been able to find my father nor my mother, but I am staying with a group who looks after me and I am being trained as a child journalist to do interviews with other children affected by the war," he said.

Aid organisations estimate that several thousands of children in Sierra Leone have been forced into rebel ranks as fighters, cooks, porters and sex slaves.

"I have interviewed many children and very often they have been left on their own. Nobody takes care of them," Swankay said. "Many children have been set free by the rebels, but we can not stay with these agencies who look after us forever."

"Who will be responsible for us? We lack so many things. The situation actually remains very bad for the children in Sierra Leone," he said.

"I am asking you to help us, or we are going to become rebels again or thieves," he warned.

Egypt's first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, who chaired the forum, promised "to make the voices and message of the children heard. We cannot be more clear."

The crisis of child soldiers in Africa dominated the second day of the four day summit. The conference aims to adopt a common African position on children's needs ahead of the UN general assembly's special session on children, slated for September 19-21 in New York.

UNICEF statistics say more than 300,000 children are fighting in armed conflicts around the world, most of them in Africa. The highest numbers are found in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Uganda. The humanitarian organisation, Save The Children, places the number of child soldiers in Africa at 120,000. At least another 200,000 children are forced into slavery in Central and West Africa, notably for seasonal work such as harvesting cash crops like cocoa, according to UNICEF.

In February, Uganda handed 163 child soldiers from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over to UN agencies at a public ceremony in a military training camp in the west of the country. Children are still abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda to serve as soldiers in the rebel group's war to overthrow President Yoweri

Museveni's regime. Save the Children puts the number at 14,000. In Sudan, the largest country in Africa, 2,500 child soldiers were released in February by the southern animist and Chistian Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) at war with the Arab north for 18 years.

Please click here if you would like to make a donation to support our projects.