HUMAN RIGHTS | Defending human dignity
08 May 2008
Reintegration Often Tougher for Girl Child Soldiers
Stigma, secrecy create extra burdens
Washington -- Recovering from the stresses of soldiering in war is difficult for children; it is especially so for girl soldiers who often find stigmatization hinders their efforts to return to peacetime lives.
Information on girl soldiers is difficult to obtain, acknowledges Michael Wessells, author of the book Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection. “We just don’t have good data,” he told America.gov. “And I think the primary reason is the enormous stigma. For a girl to do difficult things, like killing and maiming, is unthinkable. It is much more unthinkable than it is for a boy.”
Wessells, a psychologist and professor at Columbia University and Randolph-Macon College, has many years of experience working as a child-protection practitioner with Christian Children’s Fund, a nonprofit organization that assists some 13 million children and their families in 31 countries. The fund helps children of all faiths.
He said child-protection practitioners only recently have been able to uncover evidence that suggests more than 10,000 girls might have been used as soldiers during the decades-long war in Angola, he said. That paucity of information is common wherever child soldiers are used, he added.
Child soldiers are known to have been used in conflicts throughout Africa and in Colombia, Sri Lanka, Burma, the Philippines, Iran, Iraq and Chechnya.
As a result, most former girl soldiers -- whether they were recruited or abducted; whether they served as combatants or simply in support roles -- try to hide their experiences, Wessells said. They fear they will not be able to marry and have normal family lives.
In Africa, where use of child soldiers has been especially prevalent, “family relations really matter a lot in the eyes of the community,” Wessells said. “We are dealing with, for the most part, collectivist societies where the girls define their well-being not in terms of their individual well-being, but in terms of their social relations and how well accepted they are by peers and elders and others,” he said.
Often girl soldiers are forced into exclusive sexual relationships by their captors. When babies result, the girls, who might have found a measure of protection in these unions, regard the fathers as “real” husbands, Wessells said. But these so-called “bush marriages” don’t endure in peacetime, he added, especially in rebel groups, because the couples are seen by their communities as having chosen to continue a military lifestyle rather than integrate into civilian life.
Heartbreak faces even those former girl soldiers with children who can find new husbands in peacetime. In West Africa and other parts of rural sub-Sahara Africa, the new husband often will not accept the children of his wife’s previous relationships, Wessells said. Those children are sent away to family members willing to take them; often they are marginalized or exploited.
HELPING GIRLS HELP THEMSELVES
The problem with programs trying to help former child soldiers is that they do not look at how the children themselves perceive their needs, according to Wessells.
“We don’t always do a very good job of listening to young people,” Wessells said. “One of the questions that comes up in regard to girls is: Have we taken adequate time to understand what the girls’ view of reintegration is?”
To address this issue, Wessells is working with the Christian Children’s Fund and 10 other agencies in a participatory action research (PAR) program in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Uganda. It focuses on more than 600 former girl soldiers who are mothers.
The goal, Wessells said, “is to put the power in the hands of girls; to have them go through a process wherein they organize themselves, define what reintegration means to them; ask what’s missing, and then design small actions and steps.
“One of the things that is happening so far is that they feel they don’t want to single themselves out too much,” Wessells said. “So they‘ve begun working with community advisory committees that they’ve set up, and they [the committees] consist in some cases of men as well as women. The whole idea is to try to not put themselves above the community but to work through and with the community.”
Some of the former girl soldiers are serving their communities or starting small businesses, he said. Although the program is only part way complete, the results seem promising. “The girls are saying they feel they are visible for the first time, that they have a voice and that they’re very proud of what they themselves are able to accomplish with their friends and the adults in the community and with their children,” Wessells said
Gender inequality remains an issue.
“I think it is a mistake,” Wessells said, “to think of reintegration as some nice benefits that happen in a post-conflict environment. It has to be part of a much wider movement toward the achievement of girls’ rights and all human rights.” Violence against women, he said, is endemic in many patriarchal societies.
“The problems of girl soldiers are only one small element in a much wider array of girls’ issues and denial of girls’ rights,” Wessells said.
For more information about child soldiers, see:
• Programs Help Child Soldiers Return Home;
• U.S. Funding Helps Fight One of the “Worst Forms of Child Labor”;
• Videos Show al-Qaida in Iraq Recruiting Children for Terrorism;
• Child Soldiers a National and Global Security Issue, Expert Says;
• Former Child Soldier a Beacon of Hope to Conflict Survivors; and
• Nongovernment Groups Play Role in Stopping Use of Child Soldiers.
