Narratives of Memory and Forgiveness Conference : Cape Town (25 November 2006)
Presented: Annemiek Richters Leiden University Center & Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, The Netherlands
Yvonne Wabatagore, a researcher from DEVELOPMENT WORKS attended this conference and shares her thoughts and experiences…
I was really looking forward to this session. I wanted to understand why children end up committing such atrocities and at such a tender age. I believe the talk, although very open ended, did somehow help me understand the plight of the former child soldiers and also that of their immediate family and community.
Annie Marie presented a paper that she co wrote with Ria Reis and supervised Grace Akello, her PhD student. Explaining that the research was very open ended helped as she touched on how their focus was to find out why reconciliation of families and communities with former child soldiers has not worked as well as has been anticipated.
Sadly when the former child soldiers come back into the community they suffer from Cen. Cen usually involves having nightmares, flashbacks and possibly sleepless nights. What intrigued me was how NGOs that have taken to counselling and helping the former child soldiers reintegrate into the communities having committed a number of atrocities. Locally it is believed that repenting and asking God for forgiveness will help one heal from Cen or alternatively joining the rebel soldiers or the government army helps as well.
However Annemiek highlighted that the former child soldiers suffer from post traumatic stress which thus affects their behaviour as they have been exposed to extreme violent activities. Citing many case studies and showing pictures taken in Uganda, children from 8 years and 16 years old (when abducted) can murder members of their own community. Their research highlighted that the reintegration process becomes difficult as the immediate communities find it hard to deal with someone who could have potentially killed their loved ones. Coincidently Annie spoke of a counsellor who found out that her client had killed her uncle. On finding this out the counsellor broke down and could not continue seeing the former child soldier
The former child soldiers who go through the reintegration process are usually rejected and are heavily stigmatised by their immediate community as they suffer from Cen which is believed to be caused by revenge of the spirits of those they killed.
The findings of the paper were interesting but one could not help but comment that possible western methods of reintegration used by the NGOs might not be as effective in reintegrating the former child soldiers. One would suggest involving immediate community and families to be part of the reintegration process using their own indigenous or traditional methods of healing.
