Chapter Three:

How can we tell what happened to us? There are no words to describe what we have witnessed. What we saw, what we heard, what we did, and how it changed our lives, is beyond measure. We were murdered, raped, amputated, tortured, mutilated, beaten, enslaved and forced to commit terrible crimes. Everyone talks about “the impact of war on children.” But how do you measure the impact of war? Who suffers the greater horror, the child who is violated, or the child who is forced to become a perpetrator? We are the victim, the perpetrator and the witness, All at once. If we speak, who will understand us? and yet we cannot and will not remain silent. The war has taught us the meaning of injustice, and we know that the children of Sierra Leone have rights. It is our right to speak up, to try and find the words to tell our story. Our rights, as children, are clearly stated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This Convention is an international treaty that has been ratified by Sierra Leone and all but two countries in the world. It belongs to us. It is the promise that countries make to protect children and ensure that we have the best possible start in life.

Article 38 of the Convention obligates States Parties to “take all feasible measures to ensure protection and care of children who are affected by an armed conflict.” But we were not protected. We witnessed the destruction of our lives and the lives of everyone around us –our country, our communities and our families. Our culture and traditions which we hold dear were deliberately attacked. Our parents and teachers and others who tried to protect us were Powerless. The world was trampled before our eyes. It is our responsibility to speak and bear witness. Because we are the ones who survived, we are the voice of our sisters and brothers who were murdered in the war. It is our burden and our blessing to speak for them. But the story we have to tell is not a story for children.

It is not ‘child-friendly’ Still, we are children and we will not surrender our childhood to war. We are strong enough to stop the war. That is what we believe. Listen to us. We are not tomorrow’s generation. We are the generation of today. The events of yesterday have become part of who we are. Like someone waking up after a long nightmare, we are stepping out in the morning to find our place in the world, to look for the way forward. And if even the road has been destroyed, then, with our footsteps, thousands and thousands of us will build a new road into the future. We begin always with a prayer. We pray on behalf of all he children of Sierra Leone. We pray with each other and for each other. And our prayer is also a promise, a solemn vow. The children of Sierra Leone will not forget. Together we will build new hope for a peaceful future in our country.

Meeting of Children’s Forum Network
on participation in the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abduction, forced recruitment and the use of children as soldiers
During the war, children were targeted for recruitment by every armed group, paramilitary group and military force. We were taken from our homes, from our villages, torn away from our families, and forced to kill. The Commission records that children as young as one year old were abducted. In some cases children only five years old were captured and trained to fight.

Some of the commanders who captured us had war names, like ‘Show No Mercy’, ‘Pay Yourself’ and ‘Nothing’ Spoilt’. One boy was abducted at the age of eight and forced to watch his parents mutilated and killed. Then he was drugged until he didn’t know what he was doing and ordered to “wash” – or kill – his remaining family members. He was taken as a fighter in the Revolutionary United Front until he was later captured by the Sierra Leonean army and again recruited by force into its ranks.

According to submissions to the Commission, the estimated number of children who were abducted and forced to fight in the war up numbered up to 10,000. The children fought on all sides, with the RUF, the AFRC, the CDF and the RSLAF (the Sierra Leonean army). An equal number of children were abducted for sexual slavery and forced labour. Why were we targeted? Because we were powerless and easy to manipulate; because we were frightened and did as we were told; because we were cheap and easy to feed; because we were vulnerable; because we were children; and because they didn’t care if we lived or died.

During the war, the smallest among us were often placed closest to the battle because the smallest were said to be the most fearless. Very often we were injected with drugs or given alcohol to deaden our fear and take away our thoughts. The Commission found that at least half the children who were drugged by the fighting forces were under the age of 13. One small boy told the Commission, “I was abducted in Makeni, injected with cocaine and sent for training. After the training, I was sent on a mission to attack the Guinean troops.”

Another child testified, “Before I was captured, the rebels shot my father and mother in front of me, and having killed them, one of the commandos grabbed me by the throat, tied both of my hands, cut parts of my body with a blade and placed cocaine in it. I had no option but to join them because I no longer had parents.”

We were made to loot properties and burn houses. Many of us were forced to kill or rape our own family members, in order to ruin our moral sense and destroy our identity and our family ties. Once captured, we were treated like slaves. We carried heavy loads and walked long distances at gunpoint. Many of us died. If we tried to escape we were tortured or put to death. Some of us were branded with scars that spelled the letters of the armed group that enslaved us. One child who testified to the Commission stated, “After we had been captured and trained, they forced us to take up guns and we attacked several villages. All those who tried to run away were caught and labelled RUF with knives, blades or sharp sticks.”

The brand on the children’s bodies prevented them from escaping. If they did manage to run away and were found by any other group, they would immediately be killed. Even after the war, some children were unable to go home because of the scars. They were ashamed and afraid because they had been branded and were therefore accused of the deeds committed by the fighting forces. They were banished from their families and their former happy life. One child told the Commission; “…I was at the age of 10 when rebels captured me…one day a friend reported me to our boss commander that I wanted to run. I was called, interrogated, threatened and he decided to mark RUF on my chest with a razor blade… he purposely marked me… this mark on my chest is a stigma on my body and life.”

Many of us spent years under these harsh and brutal conditions. We lost our idea of ourselves, our family and our community. Recruiting children is wrong. It is also against the law. The recruitment or use of children under 15 in armed conflict is a war crime, forbidden by international law. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989, and the 1977 Additional Protocols to the four

“After we had been captured and trained, they forced us to take up guns
and we attacked several villages…. All those who tried to run away were caught and labelled RUF with knives, blades or sharp sticks.”

Geneva Conventions of 1949 outlaw the recruitment or use of children under 15 years of age in hostilities. The Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court explicitly defines the recruitment or use of children under 15 in hostilities as a war crime. The Optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict entered into force on 12 February 2002 and has been ratified by Sierra Leone. It raises the minimum age for direct participation in wartime hostilities to age 18. All of these international treaties agree that children should not be used to fight in adult wars.

Abduction and sexual slavery
How many girls were captured and raped by the fighting forces? There is no exact figure. thousands were targeted. Most were raped repeatedly, or gang raped. According to the Commission, 50 per cent of sexual slaves whose ages were documented were 15 years or under at the time of abduction. There are reports of girls as young as seven years old being abducted and forced into sexual slavery. Many of the girls bled to death. We do not even want to tell about these crimes. Many of us who lived through that horror cannot bear to talk about it.

We don’t want to remember. It is too terrible for you to imagine. Even we cannot imagine how these things happened to us. Rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence against girls were organised and widespread. Many of the girls were forced to become so-called ’bush wives’ of commanders. Others were locked in a room and used by the fighters. Many became pregnant and gave birth to children when they were, themselves, still children. The girls who survived that trauma suffered irreparable harm. Physically their bodies were scarred or mutilated. Others were infected with sexually transmitted infections.

Some who became pregnant were raped or beaten until they miscarried. When the war ended these girls had nowhere to go. They were afraid to go home, or their homes were destroyed. Most of them did not receive any help or benefits. They had nowhere to turn. Rape as a weapon of war is a war crime and a crime against humanity. Those who commit such acts are despised. The crime of sexual violence is an attack against the individual and also an attack against family, against community and against humanity. It destroys our lives and our hopes. It destroys our childhood.

“Recruiting children is wrong. It is also against the law.”Murders and massacres The story is not over. Children, families and entire villages were also victims of mass murder. These brutal acts were carried out ruthlessly and without sense or explanation. It was as if life had no meaning and no value. The Commission learned of one instance, in 1999, when rebels lined up five children from one family. When the father begged the fighters to spare his children they murdered him in coldblood. Then they executed every one of the children. How many times did this happen? How many children were killed without mercy? Young babies were not spared in this indiscriminate madness. Babies only a few months old were beaten to death for no reason. This is the horror of war, when human beings turn into killers.

Many children were witnesses to these crimes and were also drugged and forced to act in ways that were inhuman. A child told the Commission, “When I was with […], when he gave me the gun, the first person I killed was a friend, […]. I also killed six other people… he gave me cocaine regularly… in the bush I was called ‘Drink Blood’ because after killing people Colonel Jabbie would put some black substance in it and I would drink it….” The memory of these atrocities is still with us. It leaves a scar of terror inside us.

Child’s image of war

Amputation and torture Who can think of the war in Sierra Leone without seeing the victims of amputation? But the act, itself, is unthinkable. Arms and legs were brutally cut off and people were mutilated. This hideous crime left a mark on our country that we cannot erase. It must protect us from such madness in the future.

The children of Sierra Leone were not spared. Our limbs were also cut off and, although many bled to death, others survived as evidence of such cruelty. A child, only eight months old, suffered amputation. One 12-year-old girl spoke to the Commission during the closed hearings in Makeni. She said, “At about 2 a.m. the rebels attacked our town…. They lined up a number of people, sent for a mortar and asked each of us to put our hand and they cut them off… I placed my right hand and it was chopped off.” The torture that was inflicted on us cannot even be described. There are no words to describe it.

Forced child labour
The Sierra Leone diamond mines are well known because the so-called “blood diamonds” helped pay for the machinery of the war. It is another symptom of the insanity of war that we children of Sierra Leone were forced to labour in the diamond mines and retrieve these terrible gems that would become the source of our suffering.

There are stories of unbearable misery told by the children who worked in the diamond mines. If children were exhausted and stumbled in the mines, then they might pay for it with their life. That is how cheap our lives because. Many children, some of them former child soldiers, continued in this toil long after the war. Children who lost their parents and families also turned to mining in an effort to survive. Others struggled to survive, living in the street.

The dignity of life was left in ruins. One nine-yearold boy said that he was ashamed and embarrassed to beg in the street but he had no other means of survival.We know that children have a right to survival, but what about the children of Sierra Leone? Even our own parents, in heir desperation, have sent us out on the street to beg. This injustice turns into an even greater poverty of spirit.

Separation and displacement
One 12-year-old boy’s testimony to the Commission tells what happened to him when his village was attacked. “Everyone was running helter-skelter. It was as if the world was coming to an end. I only heard my parents shouting my name but could not see them and neither would they see me. We went our different ways and that was the last time I ever heard the sweet voices of Mama andPappa.” After this heartbreak – what he called the “great separation” – life became extremely difficult for this boy. He entered a camp for displaced persons and described the painful experiences that he endured.

Many of us know a similar fate. We once lived in a home with a loving family but now that former life is lost. We know of one girl in the Moyamba District who was separated from her parents when she was only five. The fear and grief broke her heart. Two weeks later she died.
Others have spent their childhood in so-called temporary camps, where families who have lost their home and fled their village, seek refuge. But instead of safety we have found hunger and exploitation. Some of us were sexually abused and exploited in the camps.

The Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) reported to the Commission that over 15,000 children suffered separation during the 10-year war. Many children fled across national borders to other West African countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Guinea, Liberia and Nigeria. Many more fled to neighbouring provinces or chiefdoms inside the country. Some of us, who were separated from our families at the age of five or six, are not able to identify ourselves.

We do not know the name of our village; we cannot remember our mother’s face. As far back as we can remember there has been only war. These are the stories of our childhood. We are not trying to make others feel sorry for us – we don’t want sympathy. But we do need help to recover and to search for our identity. We need to find out who we are and what we can become.

Child’s drawing of home

The children’s vision for the future of Sierra Leone Many children sent their ideas to the National Vision project in the form of poems, songs, paintings and drawings. This is what some of us had to say:

Children’s drawings of a peaceful Sierra Leone