News Releases
Valparaiso Law students present research on child soldiers in Africa
Monday, April 21, 2008
Three Valparaiso University law students were invited to present research papers examining how to help the thousands of child soldiers who fought in Sierra Leone’s civil war during the international conference “Odd Bedfellows: Sierra Leonean Diamonds and Ukrainian Arms” in New York City.
The conference, which took place April 18 and 19, was sponsored by the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Harriman Institute.
Presenters at the conference were:
- Pierce Lehr, a second-year law student from Waco, Texas, who discussed “From Darkness to Light: The Resurgence of Peace in West Africa”; and
- David Wright, a second-year law student from Sammamish, Wash., and Marcus Flinders, a first-year law student from Provo, Utah, presented “The Flag Means More Than Death: Applying Lessons from the Hitler Youth to the Reintegration of Sierra Leone’s Child Armies.”
Wright and Flinders said the Sierra Leone Liberation Movement’s child armies continue a trend of psychological manipulation and indoctrination markedly similar to the Hitler Youth.
“Fundamental to programming child soldiers in Sierra Leone and National Socialist Germany was the disintegration of the child from the family unit,” Wright said, followed by exposure to continual acts of violence against civilians, friends and family members. “Reasserting basic values in former child soldiers is the most critical and difficult task in post-conflict normalization.”
In their paper, Wright and Flinders draw on Allied experiences with the Hitler Youth during and after World War II that offer pragmatic insights on reintegrating child soldiers into society.
In his paper, Lehr examines how storytelling may help former child soldiers come to terms with their part in Sierra Leone’s 10-year long civil war and rebuild their lives.
“Boy soldiers were so thoroughly indoctrinated that even after the war they still would endeavor to kill individuals who were seen to be on the other side,” he said.
Yet Lehr noted the success the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission had incorporating storytelling into the healing process after the fall of apartheid, providing an important vehicle through which perpetrators of violence and the public could listen to the pain and trauma that victims experienced.
“The government of Sierra Leone can help promote the process of storytelling by establishing safe venues where ex-child soldiers may tell their stories and also hear the narratives of pain from their victims,” Lehr said. “The healing and reconciliation of Sierra Leone’s youth is the key to the country’s future.”
The “Odd Bedfellows” conference explored topics such as the journey of arms into the hands of child soldiers and rebel warriors in Sierra Leone during its 1990s civil conflict and seek to understand lessons associated with the illicit trade of arms and how students of international relations can explore new approaches to peace and security in conflict zones.
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