Children and Conflict
UNICEF Television B-Roll
Total Running Time: 18’02”
1.
Highlights package
2’00”
2.
Sudan (Child soldiers)
3’22”
3.
Ingushetia (Chechen children)
2’32”
4.
Angola (Living with landmines)
2’32”
5.
Sierra Leone (Child soldiers/amputees)
3’30”
6.
Colombia (Wounded child soldier, Children’s
Peace Movement and Conflict resolution)
3’33”
Note to broadcasters: This video B-roll is provided by UNICEF
free of charge but please credit UNICEF on-screen
Contact Information
•
Background information:
Jehane Sedky-Lavandero (212) 326 7269
•
Background information about this tape and its contents :
Dan Thomas, UNICEF NY, Telephone : (212) 326-7075
SHOTLIST INFORMATION
NTSC
Time code
1. Highlights package (2’00”)
Rumbek, southern Sudan (July 6, 2000)
01 00 00
Child soldiers in southern Sudan
01 00 23
Future Search Conference on child soldiers
SPLA officers listening to conference
Small demobilisation ceremony – SPLA boy soldiers give up their
weapons
Freetown, Sierra Leone (March 1999)
01 00 56
Child soldiers of the Kamajor hunting group
Child victims of conflict in Sierra Leone (girl with one arm, boy
with bandaged head, boy with scarred face)
01 01 26
17-year-old Adamse Kamara who had her right hand cut off as
well as all the fingers on her left hand
Sputnik Camp, Ingushetia (July 2000)
01 01 35
Wide shot of camp
Chechen boy with toy gun Chechen boy drawing picture Child’s picture depicting war
01 02 00
Highlights package ends
2. Rumbek, southern Sudan (July 6, 2000)
01 02 06
Boy soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army
01 03 05
16-year-old Santino (in cap, with scarred forehead)
01 03 39
16-year-old Santino (no cap, with scarred forehead) saying:
“This isn’t the first time I have been persuaded to go to school.
In 1996 me and some other boys were sent to school but we
decided to go back to the SPLA camp because at least there we
had food and a place to sleep”
01 04 03
Future Search Conference on child soldiers
SPLA officers listening to conference
01 04 35
Small demobilisation ceremony – SPLA boy soldiers give up their
weapons
01 05 18
SPLA officers pile up the weapons
3. Sputnik Camp, Ingushetia (July 2000)
01 05 30
View of camp for internally displaced people
01 05 38
Chechen children at play as part of psychosocial rehabilitation
Chechen children drawing pictures
01 06 41
Children’s pictures showing war and destruction
01 07 32
Rosemary McCreery, UNICEF Representative in Russian
Federation explaining that many of the children in these IDP
(internally displaced people) camps are dealing with
displacement for the second time.
4. Kuito, Bie Province, Angola (June 10-12, 2000)
01 08 05
Children playing on war-damaged tank
01 08 48
Teenage landmine victim on crutches
01 09 00
Children from UNICEF-supported Pic Pecs ECC school walk
through mined area on path
01 09 37
Deminers from HALO Trust digging up landmines
01 10 00
Deminer from HALO Trust lectures children about danger of
mines
5. Sierra Leone (March 1999)
Bo, Sierra Leone
01 10 42
Child soldiers with guns and knives (members of the Kamajor
hunting group) at roadblock
Freetown, Sierra Leone
01 11 45
Connaught Hospital ward – child victims of conflict
01 11 54
17-year-old Adamse Kamara who had her right hand cut off as
well as all the fingers on her left hand
Small boy in bed with bandaged head
Boy with scarred face
01 13 00
Murray Town Amputee Camp on the outskirts of Freetown
-amputee 10-year-old Emma Kargba braiding her doll’s hair with
stump of her arm.
6. Colombia
Archival footage (dates unknown)
01 14 16
Wounded 14-year-old rebel soldier lies on battlefield (sounds
of gunfire)
01 15 00
Children’s Peace Movement – speeches and march
Medellin Colombia (March 1999)
01 15 56
Wilfredo Machado, 17, and Johemir Perez, 15, walking through
town on way to workshop
01 16 44
Wilfredo Machado, 17, and Johemir Perez, 15, using glove
puppets for conflict resolution role play
01 16 44
Wilfredo Machado, 17,doing role play with puppets saying he’s
lost everything. He has no father and no future, but he’s going
to get on with his life and go and live with his sister.
ENDS
Note to broadcasters: This video B-roll is provided by UNICEF
free of charge but please credit UNICEF on-screen
Children and Conflict
Script information
1. Highlights (Suggested script)
These boy soldiers in Rumbek, southern Sudan, are just some of the thousands of children fighting for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army against the Sudanese government. Some of them joined the SPLA as young as 10 after seeing their loved ones killed by government troops. The SPLA became their surrogate family and fighting the only way of life they know.
But negotiations to get them off the battlefield and into the classroom are
underway. On Thursday July 6th, 2000 a workshop in Rumbek supported by UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) ended with participants, which included SPLA commanders, pledging to keep children out of the military and send them to school instead. As a symbol of good faith, the SPLA conducted a small demobilisation ceremony at the end of the workshop.
But it isn’t only rebel armies which recruit children to their cause. These young members of the Kamajor hunting group in Sierra Leone were signed up by the Civil Defence Forces to support the democratically-elected government in its civil war against rebel forces.
Whether they are protagonists or victims, millions of other young people around the world are being denied their right to a childhood by wars and conflicts that they have no stake in. These children in Sierra Leone were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seventeen-year-old Adamse Kamara had her right hand cut off as well as all the fingers on her left hand.
And it’s not just African children who find themselves in the firing line. Thousands of Chechen children now find themselves living in refugee camps like this one in neighbouring Ingushetia. In this UNICEF-supported programme at the Sputnik camp, psychologists and teachers work side by side encouraging children to come to terms with what they have seen during months and years of fighting in their
homeland. Their paintings portray scenes that no child should have to witness. Ends
More detailed script information
2. Rumbek, southern Sudan (Shot: July 2-6, 2000)
The Rumbek demobilisation camp in southern Sudan is an unprecedented joint effort by UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to get children off the battlefield and into school.
The 300 boy soldiers here are only a fraction of the total number recruited by the SPLA to fight the Sudanese government’s army. Thousands of its soldiers are under the age of 18.
The SPLA had pledged to stop the recruitment of child soldiers in 1995 and has demobilised some children since. However, because of an interplay of factors and often with the consent or active contribution of local chiefs and parents, the army continued to recruit children.
Santino, aged 16, has been with the SPLA since he was only 10 years old. After his parents and all but one of his siblings were killed in a raid on their village, the SPLA became his new family and he did odd jobs like gathering wood before becoming an active soldier. He says in his interview that he was demobilised and sent to school in 1996 but he decided to go back to the SPLA because, as a civilian child without a family, he had no food or place to sleep.
On Thursday 6 July a UNICEF sponsored "Future Search" workshop on child soldiers ended in Rumbek with participants pledging to keep children out of the military to give them a future in civil society.
The workshop's resolutions followed three days of deliberations. Over ninety participants - representing the stakeholder groups of former child soldiers, school children, parents, teachers, traditional chiefs, spiritual and religious
leaders, indigenous and international non-governmental organizations and UNICEF, civil authority and the military - shared experiences on the past, exchanged views on the present and developed a vision on the future.
Based on the findings and resolutions of the "Future Search", the SPLM/A and SRRA - the humanitarian wing of the SPLM - together with UNICEF and concerned NGOs under the umbrella of Operation Lifeline Sudan, such as Save the Children Sweden and UK, will develop a plan to achieve an end to child recruitment and obtain the demobilization and reintegration of all child soldiers currently enrolled in the SPLM.
As a symbol of good faith, the SPLA conducted a small demobilisation ceremony at the end of the workshop.
A key strategy of UNICEF’s approach is to promote children’s rights and
humanitarian principles among the warring parties in Sudan. UNICEF spends about US$30 million each year in Sudan, divided between north and south according to need and depending on access. The focus is on basic services such as education,
health, water and sanitation, as well as protection of children and advocacy for their rights.
3. Sputnik Camp for Internally Displaced Persons, Ingushetia, Russian Federation (Shot: July 2000)
The conflict in the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation sent some 250,000 Chechen civilians fleeing to neighbouring states. The Sputnik Camp in Ingushetia, close to the Chechen border, is home to some 7,000 Chechen refugees. In response to this humanitarian emergency, UNICEF and the UNHCR are trying to meet the immediate needs of all displaced women and children in the North Caucasus region. As a result of the months and years of fighting in Chechnya, many of the children have been through potentially traumatic experiences and UNICEF is helping to provide psychosocial rehabilitation with teachers and psychologists working side by side to help children come to terms with what they have witnessed and suffered. Among other activities like singing and dancing, the children are encouraged to draw pictures, many of which show only too clearly what they have been through. In the class we filmed, five adults look after around 250 children. UNICEF Representative for the Russian Federation Rosemary McCreery explains the effect that the
conflict has had on Chechen children.
4. Kuito, Bie Province, Angola (Shot: June 10-12, 2000)
According to UNICEF, children in Angola are more at risk of harm than children in any other country. In the 1999 Child Risk Measure (its league table of vulnerable children) Angola came top.
Years of conflict in Angola have displaced almost two million people, three-quarters of whom are women and children. The children here are particularly vulnerable to disease, malnutrition and almost seven million landmines still buried in the ground. One in four of Angolan children die before the age of five from preventable
diseases. More than half of these die from malaria. Adults are also very vulnerable and, according to UNICEF, there are an estimated 100,000 abandoned children. Clearing the landmines is a huge task. To date, some 90,000 Angolan children and adults have been killed or maimed by mines. Mined roads and footpaths impede repatriation and mined farmland precludes farming to the extent that less than four per cent of farmland is under cultivation.
UNICEF is working with schools in Angola to educate children about the danger of landmines. As part of an “exploration” lesson, a teacher at the UNICEF-supported Pic Pecs ECC School in Kuito, Bie Province, takes her class to meet landmine clearers from the Halo Trust. The minefield is just 500 metres from the school either side of a path the children and other members of the local community use unsupervised every day. The teacher points out the signs saying “Danger Mine” and one of the deminers gives the children a lecture and warns them not to stray from the path.
5. Bo and Freetown, Sierra Leone (Shot: March 1999)
Sierra Leone entered the last year of the millennium facing the worst crisis in its nine years of civil war. On 6 January 1999, the rebel forces in Sierra Leone invaded Freetown. It took several weeks before ECOMOG could re-establish control of the Western peninsula on which Freetown is situated. Thousands of civilians were raped, slaughtered, maimed or otherwise exposed to extremes of brutality. 2,000 children were registered as missing. At least 92 schools and three tertiary
education institutions in the city were burned down or completely destroyed. Most health clinics and hospitals were also looted and damaged.
About half the population (over 2 million persons), are estimated to have been uprooted from their homes.
Over the years, Sierra Leonean children have been abducted and conscripted into the fighting forces. An estimated 3,900 children are associated with the former rebel forces of the RUF/AFRC.
Children have also been fighting on the Government side. The children shown on our tape are Kamajors – members of traditional hunting group. They mobilised during the junta period to form the Civil Defence Forces (CDFs) – a militia group
supporting the democratically-elected Government. Some of these children are as young as seven years of age. The Kamajors are famous for their distinctive
costumes, hats and talismans that they believe make them invincible. We filmed them guarding a roadblock near Bo.
Thousands of other children have been displaced and are in need of psychosocial care. Girls in particular have suffered exploitation and abuse and are victims of mass rape during armed attacks. Many others suffered amputations and mutilation and witnessed the violent deaths or mutilations of family members.
In a ward at the Connaught Hospital in Freetown, we filmed 17-year-old Adamse Kamara who had her right hand cut off as well as all the fingers on her left hand. The Murray Town Amputee Camp on the outskirts of Freetown offers shelter for some 200 amputees. It is run by MSF and Handicap International. We filmed amputee 10-year-old Emma Kargba braiding her doll’s hair.
Despite the violence, UNICEF has been working to maintain the education system by setting up temporary schools in refugee camps. These not only help educate displaced children but also give a structure and sense of normality to their lives while everything else is falling apart around them.
6. Colombia (Shot: March 1999 and Archive Footage)
After half a century of civil war, several generations of children in Colombia have suffered terribly. An average of 12 children die every day – five are murdered, three die in traffic accidents, one commits suicide and three die in other accidents.
It is estimated that in Colombia some 6,000 minors are involved with armed groups. A study carried out by the Defender of the People between 1996 and 1998 found that 18 per cent of the children involved with armed groups had killed at least once, 40 per cent had shot at someone, 18 per cent had witnessed torture and 28 per cent have been wounded. Our footage (shot by an unknown local cameraman) shows a 14-year-old rebel lying wounded in a ditch as a battle rages around him.
Since 1985, armed conflict has forced 1.5 million people to flee their land – 65 per cent of whom were children.
However, outstanding achievements have been made by the Children’s Movement for Peace which has been growing steadily since 1996. It generated and then fostered the 1997 Citizens’ Mandate for Peace, Life and Liberty which was endorsed in 1998 by the votes of 10 million adult Colombian citizens. Through the Children’s Movement for Peace, young Colombians have become social activists ensuring that their voices are heeded on a number of issues.
The objective of the Movement is to promote opportunities for children to be involved in peace-building, by improving the quality of life in their communities and promoting their views on solutions to end the violence in their country.
Approximately 100,000 young people (approximately 40 per cent male, 60 per cent female) are active participants in the peace movement—and this figure is
increasing. Their activities range from peer counselling to organizing social and cultural events such as peace carnivals and assisting in the construction of
temporary shelters for children affected by the earthquake in January 1999.
Wilfredo Machado, aged 17, and Johemir Perez, aged 15, are members of the Children’s Peace Movement. We filmed them in March 1999 in Medellin,
Colombia where they work with younger children (in this case 10 to 14-year-olds) to come to terms with domestic and community violence. Using glove puppets, the two teenage boys conduct role-playing exercises to help children resolve their feelings. We filmed them working with a young boy who’s father had been shot.
ENDS