Last week was both the most taxing and the most interesting since I arrived here in Liberia. A pilot project that ActionAid is implementing for Conservation International was to be reviewed together with a representative from the United States Agency for International Development, the project financiers. Operating under the rather American-sounding title ‘Civilian Conservation Corps’, the project aims to engage with communities living around Sapo National Park in the remote southeast of the country. The objective is to provide incentives for communities in return for their contribution to conservation activities and the enforcement of park protection.
Established as Liberia’s first protected area in 1983, Sapo is a biodiversity hotspot and an important part of the Upper Guinea Forest Ecosystem. Some parts of the forest are thought never to have been entered by humans and the park is home to several rare species, some of which are endemic to the area. Sapo made international news headlines last week when the elusive Pygmy Hippo, once thought to be extinct, was captured on camera by a team from the Royal Zoological Society.
I could tell that tensions were running slightly above their normal levels among my colleagues in the office. The pressure was on to prove to the donor that the project was producing tangible results. This was going to be a challenge given the subtle nature of the intervention. What’s more, the communities are more or less cut off from the rest of the country due to the near total lack of infrastructure. The word ‘road’ is far too generous a term to describe what we drove over to get out there! The journey took the best part of two days. To put this into context, Liberia is roughly one third the size of the UK. We passed numerous vehicles that were stuck and some of the passengers had been waiting by the roadside for several days.
Faced with this isolation people living in the area are forced to engage in illicit activities which undermine the conservation of the park. The area is rich in wildlife and hunting for ‘bush meat’ is rife. The problem is that much of what is caught is endangered. At one stop your correspondent was offered some smoked Colobus Monkey. Identification of the species was made possible by the fact that the arms and hands were still attached! Another activity taking place on a significant scale is mining, mostly for diamonds and gold, and several illegal mining settlements have grown up within the park boundaries. Some are apparently better-equipped than the permanent communities outside the park, with generators and even video stores! The most curious thing about them however is their names: Baghdad, Afghanistan and America. Are these supposed to be ironic in some way?
So how do you go about convincing the locals to stop killing the cute, fluffy animals and prevent miners from entering the park to dig up their habitat? Conservation organisations have traditionally lobbied for the establishment of protected areas and official systems to enforce them. However, the Liberian government simply doesn’t have the resources to effectively police Sapo and the incentives for local communities to undermine park protection are huge considering the lack of alternatives they have. Some of the communities even claim that parts of their traditional forest were ‘grabbed’ by the authorities when the park was established without any form of consultation or compensation. This approach is clearly unfair as well as unsustainable. ActionAid’s strategy on the other hand has been to try and rather innovatively marry poverty eradication with conservation.
The first step in the process is to conduct what we in the business call a Participatory Vulnerability Analysis. In layman’s terms this amounts to sitting down with the communities and discussing why it is that they engage in illicit activities. During the process an attempt is also made to raise their awareness of conservation issues and the value of keeping the park intact. The next step is to get communities to come up with a plan for what they need in order to find alternative means of sustaining themselves. Some of the ideas so far include micro-loan schemes, agricultural activities and road rehabilitation projects. Once communities have been given the chance to take up alternative livelihoods the hope is that they will stop poaching the wildlife. Since most of the illegal miners come from outside the area and the only way for them to enter the park is through the villages in which we are working, it is also envisaged that volunteer watch teams will be set up to address this.
As always, the reality is much less simple. It will be difficult to achieve these goals unless there is long-term engagement in the area. One issue that came up during the review meetings was eco-tourism. This has the potential to be an enormously lucrative enterprise for the Sapo region in the future but the area is currently far from ready to receive environmentally-sensitive holidaymakers. With this in mind, it would be interesting to look at Costa Rica’s development strategy to see how this could be applied in the Liberian context. There are many parallels with the situation here – a volatile region prone to civil conflicts, marginalised local communities, a lack of infrastructure especially roads – but despite this Costa Rica has managed to keep a very high proportion of its land mass protected and is now reaping the economic benefits of an influx of tourists.
Encouragingly, the locals we met did seem to be aware of the reasons why the park was protected and one village had already formed its own watch group. The key to success will be to agree on suitable alternative livelihoods. One suggestion the communities made was to provide support for rubber plantations. However, this may also undermine park conservation due to the amount of forest that would need to be cleared, aside from the fact that it takes seven years before rubber tapping can start.
Most importantly for the continuation of the project was the fact that the donor representative seemed to be largely happy with what he saw. For my part, the trip was exciting but exhausting and it’s good to be back. Monrovia almost feels comfortable compared to some of the places I stayed during the visit!
Oh and in case you’re wondering, I didn’t see a Pygmy Hippo, not even on a barbecue.
Thursday 20 March 2008
Sunday 16 March 2008
Pandora’s Box
While visiting the toilet at a restaurant in the northern town of Ganta yesterday I observed something which set my mind spinning. It wasn’t the rust-coloured pools of water, the extensive array of insect life or the generally unpleasant smell. Nor was it the fact that there was no lock on the door or, despite getting a lot of practice in, that I still haven’t mastered the art of flushing with a bucket.
Fastened to the wall above the sink was a wooden box. The box was adorned with the logos of various development agencies below which was written “Free condoms. Practice safer sex. Help yourself.”
My initial reaction was one of pleasant surprise. Sub-Saharan Africa has the worst rates of HIV/AIDS of anywhere on the planet. I believe the figure in Liberia is somewhere in the region of 2.5% (although I’m not sure a very thorough survey has been conducted). A lack of access to condoms is one of many factors that have caused HIV to spread with such relentless fervour. In a country where the majority of the population can barely afford to eat every day it would seem like a good idea to give away protection for free.
The box, however, was empty. I later saw an identical one in my hotel bathroom which was in a similarly unfortunate predicament. That’s the problem with uncontrolled freebies. They tend to run out pretty fast and, more often than not, there’s no system to replace them. The same is often said of international aid in general. For the moment let’s leave aside the debate about whose fault it is that certain countries find themselves in such an incredibly tragic state and what moral obligation the richer world may or may not have to help them. What happens when all of us ‘do-gooders’ bugger off back home? Who will ensure that any progress made is sustained in the long-term? In short, who’s going to fill that box back up again and again?
Liberia is enjoying something of a honeymoon period at the moment, at least in comparison to its recent past. Foreign aid is pouring in from all corners of the globe, debt is being written off, 15,000 UN troops are keeping the peace and the main roads into most towns are like Las Vegas-style strips of brightly-painted NGO signs. But it won’t be like this forever. The UN is already starting to pull out and at some point in time emergencies in other parts of the world will force NGOs to focus their resources elsewhere too.
So what’s the answer? Returning once again to our box, an orthodox capitalist might retort that if you charged for the condoms they would be used rationally, rather than being plundered by the first person to find them. What’s more, when they ran out there would be an incentive to replace them because someone could make a profit from doing so. This is all true but is pretty much a moot point. There probably wouldn’t be a need to replace them at all. Nobody in Ganta would be able to pay for them and the sexual act would simply continue unprotected. In the same way, Liberia does not have the money to pay for its own rehabilitation. Without the foreign assistance it is currently receiving there is a high risk that it would simply slide back into civil war.
Instead of leaving the condoms in the box to dispense themselves, and in the absence of a means to pay, it is necessary to develop a strategy to ensure their availability is sustained. Perhaps a locally-staffed clinic or volunteer group could be set up to hand out the condoms together with information on how HIV spreads. This would of course require a sustainable source of funding so it’s important that people don’t come to depend on NGOs to provide such services. The local population must be made to realise that it is their government who is ultimately responsible for their welfare and to whom demands must be directed.
There’s a general tendency in developing countries to accept the sub-standard simply because it has become the norm. I often feel like a whingeing, spoiled foreigner when, for example, I complain that something in my room needs to be fixed. However, if you look at it another way you could say that the act of demanding that my expectations be met will in turn lead to a better provision of services (in this case from my landlord) for future tenants. You could say I'm whingeing for my rights!
Of course it’s not that simple on the national level in reality. People can demand all they like but without the UN and NGOs providing a large proportion of the country’s basic services it would be impossible for the Liberian government to cope with current needs. I am merely raising this point because I think it serves to illustrate the necessity of a rights-based approach to development. When people are made aware of their rights and know who to hold accountable for ensuring their protection there is a much better chance that those rights will be enjoyed in the post-assistance era. After all, there’s no point helping a country rebuild itself if it simply falls apart again when the international community pulls out.
It’s amazing the train of thought that can stem from a visit to the loo.
Fastened to the wall above the sink was a wooden box. The box was adorned with the logos of various development agencies below which was written “Free condoms. Practice safer sex. Help yourself.”
My initial reaction was one of pleasant surprise. Sub-Saharan Africa has the worst rates of HIV/AIDS of anywhere on the planet. I believe the figure in Liberia is somewhere in the region of 2.5% (although I’m not sure a very thorough survey has been conducted). A lack of access to condoms is one of many factors that have caused HIV to spread with such relentless fervour. In a country where the majority of the population can barely afford to eat every day it would seem like a good idea to give away protection for free.
The box, however, was empty. I later saw an identical one in my hotel bathroom which was in a similarly unfortunate predicament. That’s the problem with uncontrolled freebies. They tend to run out pretty fast and, more often than not, there’s no system to replace them. The same is often said of international aid in general. For the moment let’s leave aside the debate about whose fault it is that certain countries find themselves in such an incredibly tragic state and what moral obligation the richer world may or may not have to help them. What happens when all of us ‘do-gooders’ bugger off back home? Who will ensure that any progress made is sustained in the long-term? In short, who’s going to fill that box back up again and again?
Liberia is enjoying something of a honeymoon period at the moment, at least in comparison to its recent past. Foreign aid is pouring in from all corners of the globe, debt is being written off, 15,000 UN troops are keeping the peace and the main roads into most towns are like Las Vegas-style strips of brightly-painted NGO signs. But it won’t be like this forever. The UN is already starting to pull out and at some point in time emergencies in other parts of the world will force NGOs to focus their resources elsewhere too.
So what’s the answer? Returning once again to our box, an orthodox capitalist might retort that if you charged for the condoms they would be used rationally, rather than being plundered by the first person to find them. What’s more, when they ran out there would be an incentive to replace them because someone could make a profit from doing so. This is all true but is pretty much a moot point. There probably wouldn’t be a need to replace them at all. Nobody in Ganta would be able to pay for them and the sexual act would simply continue unprotected. In the same way, Liberia does not have the money to pay for its own rehabilitation. Without the foreign assistance it is currently receiving there is a high risk that it would simply slide back into civil war.
Instead of leaving the condoms in the box to dispense themselves, and in the absence of a means to pay, it is necessary to develop a strategy to ensure their availability is sustained. Perhaps a locally-staffed clinic or volunteer group could be set up to hand out the condoms together with information on how HIV spreads. This would of course require a sustainable source of funding so it’s important that people don’t come to depend on NGOs to provide such services. The local population must be made to realise that it is their government who is ultimately responsible for their welfare and to whom demands must be directed.
There’s a general tendency in developing countries to accept the sub-standard simply because it has become the norm. I often feel like a whingeing, spoiled foreigner when, for example, I complain that something in my room needs to be fixed. However, if you look at it another way you could say that the act of demanding that my expectations be met will in turn lead to a better provision of services (in this case from my landlord) for future tenants. You could say I'm whingeing for my rights!
Of course it’s not that simple on the national level in reality. People can demand all they like but without the UN and NGOs providing a large proportion of the country’s basic services it would be impossible for the Liberian government to cope with current needs. I am merely raising this point because I think it serves to illustrate the necessity of a rights-based approach to development. When people are made aware of their rights and know who to hold accountable for ensuring their protection there is a much better chance that those rights will be enjoyed in the post-assistance era. After all, there’s no point helping a country rebuild itself if it simply falls apart again when the international community pulls out.
It’s amazing the train of thought that can stem from a visit to the loo.
Saturday 8 March 2008
It’s all about M&E, M&E, M&E
So, I thought my next post should probably focus on Liberia and my experiences here. Fortunately I have no shortage of material based on the past week!
The plan was to leave for the field on Tuesday together with a team of my colleagues to conduct some monitoring and evaluation (M&E in development speak). A project supporting agricultural workers in the west of the country (many of whom had recently returned from refuge in Sierra Leone) had just completed the first phase of its activities and the idea was to go and talk to the beneficiaries and get feedback on how things could be improved in the second phase. This is something I really like about ActionAid. We go and ask the people we are supporting what they think of us and the different aspects of the projects. Admittedly I have limited experience of other development agencies but my impression is that this is quite a unique approach.
I got the impression they were expecting us at the first place. Shortly after we pulled up in our 4x4 we were greeted by a full on display of tribal dancing and singing by the village’s women. We all then assembled in the ‘village square’ (a sort of meeting area with a corrugated iron roof) and our local representative explained in the local language (Mende) why we were there. We were then introduced to the town chief, the imam (the region is predominantly Muslim), project chairman and chairwoman as well as the District Development Councillor (a position set up by the UN to co-ordinate local development initiatives).
Things felt, shall we say, slightly orchestrated at first. People expressed their thanks and unending gratitude to ActionAid for having come to their village to help them. Live chickens were even presented to us as a token of their appreciation. However, it was difficult to try and convince them to say anything critical which is really what we were looking for. I suppose one has to put oneself in their shoes. It’s a part of the culture here to be thankful when such help is received (rather than viewing it as an entitlement that should be provided by the state) and the village leaders saw the meeting as a PR exercise to make sure the cash flow didn’t stop.
One thing that was apparent from the outset is that it is the men who hold the positions of authority and do all the talking. We had constant problems with the designated interpreters as well. We would ask a question and the interpreter (normally a person of authority in the village and always a man) would just answer the question in English. We would then counter this by saying that he was supposed to interpret the question for the community, not simply answer himself!
However, as we progressed around the various communities we became more skilful at extracting the relevant information. One thorny issue which I was eager to unravel was how the project participants had been selected. 35 farmers from each of the communities were to be provided with training and inputs in order to start up agricultural activities. Since the majority of people living in these communities are involved in some sort of small scale agriculture I wanted to know how the selection process had been conducted and whether any conflicts had arisen as a result. The dialogue went something like this:
“We were told that 35 farmers were needed so we called everyone to a meeting and people put their names on a list.”
“OK, but there must have been more than 35 people that wanted to take part?” I replied.
“No, just 35, that was all we were allowed.”
“Yes but how did you eliminate the other people who wanted to take part?”
“Well, when we had 35 names we just stopped.”
“So it was first come first served?”
“Well… yes.”
“Is there anyone here who wanted to take part but couldn’t?” I asked. This was met with silence. When I pushed the point one woman raised her hand and piped up:
“Yeah, I waited all day and put my name down but when the final list was written my name wasn’t there.”
Clearly there is a need for greater transparency and fairness in selecting the farmers who take part. Obviously the best thing would be if everyone who wanted to take part could, but then the problem would just be externalised. How can we justify selecting certain communities in the area over others? This is an important consideration for any development intervention. The last thing we want to do is create conflict by offering help to some and not to others.
I thought it was a fruitful mission all in all. When a project doesn’t pass off perfectly (and how many ever really do?) it is interesting to find out why and take actions to improve things for the future. The beneficiaries are best placed to offer feedback but attention must be paid to making sure that the feedback gathered is representative of the community as a whole, not just those who talk the most.
The plan was to leave for the field on Tuesday together with a team of my colleagues to conduct some monitoring and evaluation (M&E in development speak). A project supporting agricultural workers in the west of the country (many of whom had recently returned from refuge in Sierra Leone) had just completed the first phase of its activities and the idea was to go and talk to the beneficiaries and get feedback on how things could be improved in the second phase. This is something I really like about ActionAid. We go and ask the people we are supporting what they think of us and the different aspects of the projects. Admittedly I have limited experience of other development agencies but my impression is that this is quite a unique approach.
I got the impression they were expecting us at the first place. Shortly after we pulled up in our 4x4 we were greeted by a full on display of tribal dancing and singing by the village’s women. We all then assembled in the ‘village square’ (a sort of meeting area with a corrugated iron roof) and our local representative explained in the local language (Mende) why we were there. We were then introduced to the town chief, the imam (the region is predominantly Muslim), project chairman and chairwoman as well as the District Development Councillor (a position set up by the UN to co-ordinate local development initiatives).
Things felt, shall we say, slightly orchestrated at first. People expressed their thanks and unending gratitude to ActionAid for having come to their village to help them. Live chickens were even presented to us as a token of their appreciation. However, it was difficult to try and convince them to say anything critical which is really what we were looking for. I suppose one has to put oneself in their shoes. It’s a part of the culture here to be thankful when such help is received (rather than viewing it as an entitlement that should be provided by the state) and the village leaders saw the meeting as a PR exercise to make sure the cash flow didn’t stop.
One thing that was apparent from the outset is that it is the men who hold the positions of authority and do all the talking. We had constant problems with the designated interpreters as well. We would ask a question and the interpreter (normally a person of authority in the village and always a man) would just answer the question in English. We would then counter this by saying that he was supposed to interpret the question for the community, not simply answer himself!
However, as we progressed around the various communities we became more skilful at extracting the relevant information. One thorny issue which I was eager to unravel was how the project participants had been selected. 35 farmers from each of the communities were to be provided with training and inputs in order to start up agricultural activities. Since the majority of people living in these communities are involved in some sort of small scale agriculture I wanted to know how the selection process had been conducted and whether any conflicts had arisen as a result. The dialogue went something like this:
“We were told that 35 farmers were needed so we called everyone to a meeting and people put their names on a list.”
“OK, but there must have been more than 35 people that wanted to take part?” I replied.
“No, just 35, that was all we were allowed.”
“Yes but how did you eliminate the other people who wanted to take part?”
“Well, when we had 35 names we just stopped.”
“So it was first come first served?”
“Well… yes.”
“Is there anyone here who wanted to take part but couldn’t?” I asked. This was met with silence. When I pushed the point one woman raised her hand and piped up:
“Yeah, I waited all day and put my name down but when the final list was written my name wasn’t there.”
Clearly there is a need for greater transparency and fairness in selecting the farmers who take part. Obviously the best thing would be if everyone who wanted to take part could, but then the problem would just be externalised. How can we justify selecting certain communities in the area over others? This is an important consideration for any development intervention. The last thing we want to do is create conflict by offering help to some and not to others.
I thought it was a fruitful mission all in all. When a project doesn’t pass off perfectly (and how many ever really do?) it is interesting to find out why and take actions to improve things for the future. The beneficiaries are best placed to offer feedback but attention must be paid to making sure that the feedback gathered is representative of the community as a whole, not just those who talk the most.
Sunday 2 March 2008
A new hope
This time ten years ago (in a galaxy far, far away) I was backpacking around another country with next to no public transport, boundless poverty and an unquenchable thirst for war. In case you hadn’t guessed I’m talking about the USA. That country must now make a historic decision and I’d like to throw my two pennies’ worth into the debate, if I may.
Hillary or Obama? The first female US presidential candidate or the first African American one? Well folks, I can reveal that I would plump for the latter and here’s why…
Let’s get one thing clear to start with. It’s not because he’s black. “He isn’t black”, a black guy from Harlem that I met one night pointed out to me. “His mom is a white woman from Kansas.” His dad incidentally was a foreign exchange student from Kenya who attended the University of Hawaii. He was raised in Indonesia. Without wanting to perpetuate stereotypes, I think it's safe to say that Obama's life thus far has borne little resemblance to that of the majority of African Americans. In any case, it’s beside the point. This choice should not be racialised or feminised. You should vote for someone based on what they stand for, not because they’re black, white, a woman or whatever.
If I could I would vote for Obama mainly for one reason. It may seem like a small thing but in my opinion it would help the world avoid a path to mutual destruction. He has said that he would be willing to talk to America’s ‘enemies’ (read: Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and North Korea) without setting preconditions. What a genius! Why didn’t anyone else think of this before? I mean, what harm can possibly come from talking to your adversaries? Aren’t you less likely to bomb someone into oblivion if you’ve at least had coffee with them first and discussed what it is about each other that pisses you off so much?
Because of this Obama’s detractors label him as naive. Hillary may be more experienced and have a better grasp of some of the details than her Democratic rival but she has ruled out any such meetings with the aforementioned countries without first setting preconditions. It pays to stand firm and be principled sometimes but in many other instances it is far better to be pragmatic and judge a situation based on first-hand experiences. Meet someone, talk to them, weigh up what they are saying and then decide on a course of action. Perhaps that way we can avoid another six trillion dollar war like the one Hillary voted for.
Obama is currently leading in the delegate count that decides who will eventually become the Democratic Party’s nominee. Two big states, Ohio and Texas, are voting this Tuesday. They have been billed as make or break contests for Hillary, who has lost the last eleven on the trot. There’s no argument that she’s an extremely competent politician and would definitely be a vast improvement on the current president (not a huge achievement in itself). However, I can’t help but root for the other guy on this occasion. The world really needs him right now.
Hillary or Obama? The first female US presidential candidate or the first African American one? Well folks, I can reveal that I would plump for the latter and here’s why…
Let’s get one thing clear to start with. It’s not because he’s black. “He isn’t black”, a black guy from Harlem that I met one night pointed out to me. “His mom is a white woman from Kansas.” His dad incidentally was a foreign exchange student from Kenya who attended the University of Hawaii. He was raised in Indonesia. Without wanting to perpetuate stereotypes, I think it's safe to say that Obama's life thus far has borne little resemblance to that of the majority of African Americans. In any case, it’s beside the point. This choice should not be racialised or feminised. You should vote for someone based on what they stand for, not because they’re black, white, a woman or whatever.
If I could I would vote for Obama mainly for one reason. It may seem like a small thing but in my opinion it would help the world avoid a path to mutual destruction. He has said that he would be willing to talk to America’s ‘enemies’ (read: Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and North Korea) without setting preconditions. What a genius! Why didn’t anyone else think of this before? I mean, what harm can possibly come from talking to your adversaries? Aren’t you less likely to bomb someone into oblivion if you’ve at least had coffee with them first and discussed what it is about each other that pisses you off so much?
Because of this Obama’s detractors label him as naive. Hillary may be more experienced and have a better grasp of some of the details than her Democratic rival but she has ruled out any such meetings with the aforementioned countries without first setting preconditions. It pays to stand firm and be principled sometimes but in many other instances it is far better to be pragmatic and judge a situation based on first-hand experiences. Meet someone, talk to them, weigh up what they are saying and then decide on a course of action. Perhaps that way we can avoid another six trillion dollar war like the one Hillary voted for.
Obama is currently leading in the delegate count that decides who will eventually become the Democratic Party’s nominee. Two big states, Ohio and Texas, are voting this Tuesday. They have been billed as make or break contests for Hillary, who has lost the last eleven on the trot. There’s no argument that she’s an extremely competent politician and would definitely be a vast improvement on the current president (not a huge achievement in itself). However, I can’t help but root for the other guy on this occasion. The world really needs him right now.
Dude, where’s my childhood?
I’ve just finished a brilliant book which I can thoroughly recommend: A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. It is the heart-wrenching autobiography of a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, a brutally honest account of how, after being forced to flee his village and losing his family, he is conscripted into the army to defend the country against a rebel uprising.
Putting it mildly, there are parts of the text that are really quite horrific but I was surprised at how easy it was to read and how it improved my understanding of the situation these children find themselves in. I thought it would also be good research since Liberia (which borders Sierra Leone) went through a similarly gruesome civil conflict in which children were often those fighting on the front line. It can be argued that Sierra Leone’s civil war was almost a spill-over effect of Liberia’s and many of those conscripted into the rebellion were in fact Liberian mercenaries.
The lack of a sense of belonging and a thirst to avenge the murder of his family combined with the almost constant shadow of fear and nauseating hunger made it easy for a charismatic lieutenant to persuade Ishmael and his friends to take up arms. Children don’t have the same self-preserving sense of fear as adults, especially when they’re given copious amounts of drugs (mainly brown-brown, a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder) and put into a situation where it’s ‘kill or be killed’. This makes them ideal fighting machines.
One of the most telling lines in the book is when the lieutenant says to Ishmael, as he is packing his bag: “Make sure you take as much ammo as you can carry. Don’t worry about food and water. As long as you have ammo you will have food and water”. It certainly doesn’t seem like the author holds back on many of the gory details. He describes in depth the first time he kills someone on the battlefield and how it makes him feel as well as how he ruthlessly tortured and executed prisoners with the encouragement of his commanders.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the book though is when he recounts the rehabilitation process. He is rescued from the army by Unicef and placed in a home together with other child soldiers. At first, chaos ensues. The rehabilitation workers don’t seem to realise that they have put children from both of the warring factions together in the same room. They immediately start fighting and killing each other and attacking members of staff. It is hard for the children to understand why they have been taken away from their regiments and they resent having to obey orders from ‘civilians’ who continuously tell them their behaviour is “not their fault”.
Many of the development projects currently being undertaken in Liberia are linked to this DDRR process (Demobilisation, Disarmament, Rehabilitation and Reintegration). In fact, the proposals I have been working on since I arrived are specifically targeted at young people in rural areas, many of whom are former combatants. The aim is to provide the skills training and inputs necessary for them to feed themselves and earn a living without needing to resort to armed violence.
Ishmael Beah, who is about a year younger than me, now lives in New York City with an adoptive mother and works for the organisation Human Rights Watch. He has given numerous lectures at the UN and across the globe on the issue of children in war. He describes writing the book as a form of therapy that helped him to understand and come to terms with the acts he participated in that robbed him of his childhood.
Putting it mildly, there are parts of the text that are really quite horrific but I was surprised at how easy it was to read and how it improved my understanding of the situation these children find themselves in. I thought it would also be good research since Liberia (which borders Sierra Leone) went through a similarly gruesome civil conflict in which children were often those fighting on the front line. It can be argued that Sierra Leone’s civil war was almost a spill-over effect of Liberia’s and many of those conscripted into the rebellion were in fact Liberian mercenaries.
The lack of a sense of belonging and a thirst to avenge the murder of his family combined with the almost constant shadow of fear and nauseating hunger made it easy for a charismatic lieutenant to persuade Ishmael and his friends to take up arms. Children don’t have the same self-preserving sense of fear as adults, especially when they’re given copious amounts of drugs (mainly brown-brown, a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder) and put into a situation where it’s ‘kill or be killed’. This makes them ideal fighting machines.
One of the most telling lines in the book is when the lieutenant says to Ishmael, as he is packing his bag: “Make sure you take as much ammo as you can carry. Don’t worry about food and water. As long as you have ammo you will have food and water”. It certainly doesn’t seem like the author holds back on many of the gory details. He describes in depth the first time he kills someone on the battlefield and how it makes him feel as well as how he ruthlessly tortured and executed prisoners with the encouragement of his commanders.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the book though is when he recounts the rehabilitation process. He is rescued from the army by Unicef and placed in a home together with other child soldiers. At first, chaos ensues. The rehabilitation workers don’t seem to realise that they have put children from both of the warring factions together in the same room. They immediately start fighting and killing each other and attacking members of staff. It is hard for the children to understand why they have been taken away from their regiments and they resent having to obey orders from ‘civilians’ who continuously tell them their behaviour is “not their fault”.
Many of the development projects currently being undertaken in Liberia are linked to this DDRR process (Demobilisation, Disarmament, Rehabilitation and Reintegration). In fact, the proposals I have been working on since I arrived are specifically targeted at young people in rural areas, many of whom are former combatants. The aim is to provide the skills training and inputs necessary for them to feed themselves and earn a living without needing to resort to armed violence.
Ishmael Beah, who is about a year younger than me, now lives in New York City with an adoptive mother and works for the organisation Human Rights Watch. He has given numerous lectures at the UN and across the globe on the issue of children in war. He describes writing the book as a form of therapy that helped him to understand and come to terms with the acts he participated in that robbed him of his childhood.
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