The following is a  prepared statement from WITNESS filmmaker and AJEDI-Ka founder, Bukeni Beck

The International Criminal Court has appointed the Democratic Republic of Congo as the first country where investigations will be undertaken in order to prosecute all responsible of crimes under the ICC's jurisdiction. This is the hope of all the nations. We Congolese all have hope in the International Criminal Court. Why? We hope that International Court will help as much as possible to end impunity and to prosecute those who have been responsible of different crimes in the Congo. Among them, those who use the recruitment of child soldiers as well as rape.

We need now the common support from the local level to the international community to support the International Criminal Court. And we need the International Criminal Court to be near everybody in the Congo, to be near victims and to be near witnesses. That is the goal of the film.

Girls have been raped; children have been abducted and used as soldiers. And we have International Criminal Court so this can be a solution to end impunity in the Congo. But this question of ending impunity in the Congo is not only the question of the International Criminal Court. It must also be helped by our national tribunal and courts. But the problem is our courts and tribunals are not independent. And since they are not independent they can not be effective. And since they can not be effective they can not do a better job. That is why we need the common support of the International Criminal Court and in the film we give a call to all countries, to everyone, to support the International Criminal Court.

We are very affected by some countries who are against the International Criminal Court. We think that countries like the United States of America should support the International Criminal Court with the hope of ending impunity in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where children have suffered so much.

Since 1996, the war [in the DRC] has caused up to 4 million deaths, the majority of them being children and women. This must be prosecuted. This must be end. And let peace come into Congo by your contribution. And this contribution, we like it through International Criminal Court.

Following the Film Premiere, Citizens for Global Solutions hosted a panel discussion, which included:

• Lynne Duke (Moderator)
  Correspondent, The Washington Post
• Charles Brown
  Citizens for Global Solutions
• Ozong Agborsangaya
  Search for Common Ground
• Dr. Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith
  Bellevue/NYU Program Survivors of Torture
• Richard Dicker
  Human Rights Watch

Charles J. Brown
It is my role here tonight to talk a little bit about the United States and the ICC. And I guess the best way I could start out is simply by saying that what we've just witnessed exactly what the International Criminal Court was created to address. I think it's important to keep that reality in mind.

Tonight we are discussing the role the United States could and should be playing in working to ensure that the ICC help build a more just and peaceful world. Because, unfortunately, as Bukeni noted, the United States is strongly, particularly under the Bush Administration, has strongly opposed the International Criminal Court and has attempted to block its work on a number of levels.

Now for much of the second half of the twentieth century, America was a world leader in seeking to ensure that the perpetrators of horrific atrocities were held accountable for their crimes. From the Nuremberg Trials to the creation of tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia, right up through the negotiation of the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, Americans worked to ensure justice for the victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But the Bush Administration's irrational campaign against the ICC has not only tarnished this legacy, but has violated the fundamental principle, fundamental American principles of justice, equality, accountability and fairness. It's useful to look at the Bush Administration's policy on the court. The Bush Administration has nullified the Clinton Administration's decision to sign the International Criminal Court treaty, a signature that I should note, only obligated the United States not to undermine the International Criminal Court. It did not obligate the United States to take any positive action in favor of the Court.

The Bush Administration has cut aid to friends and allies, some of whom are even contributing troops and support in Iraq, because these allies refuse to stop supporting the ICC. The Bush Administration has walked away from the negotiating table over future changes to the ICC treaty. Even as a non-signatory to the ICC, the United States could remain in the game by participating as an observer at the ICC's Assembly of State parties and seeking to influence the ICC to respect its mandate of justice for the worst crimes.

Instead, this administration has rejected any interaction with or observation of the Court's actions. Now, this isn't just spiteful, it's downright foolish. If, for the moment, we were to accept the Administration's argument, that the International Criminal Court actually does pose a threat to U.S. soldiers and U.S. officials, then the last thing the Bush Administration should want to do is walk away from the ICC and ignore its work.

Citizens for Global Solutions has been working on the issue of the International Criminal Court and the U.S. relation to the International Criminal Court for more than a decade now. We've coordinate ICC advocacy and educational opportunity in Washington; and we've supported the Court in the face of strident opposition from across the political spectrum. But, our members believe in the Court and so do I because, one of the things that Lynn [Duke] didn't mention is that in 1998, I served as a member of and a spokesperson for the U.S. delegation to the Rome Conference on the creation of an international criminal court. And as Richard can tell you, um, I didn't just make the U.S. arguments, I helped write them. I made the arguments and wrote the arguments against the International Criminal Court. And I'm here to tell you now that they were flawed then...(Audience laughs).and they're just flat out wrong now. (Audience laughs)

Now I used to argue that the Court would become politicized. We used to say that, "Oh what would happen if Saddam Hussein would sign on to the Court and then you'd have Saddam Hussein capture some soldiers, American soldiers that were shot down over the no-fly zone and he would take them to the Court and the Court would prosecute them." Well no dictator is going to sign on to join the International Criminal Court, for the simple reason that that dictator would expose himself to prosecution by the Court for future actions.

Another thing we used to say is that the first thing that would happen once this court came into effect was that it would target either Israel or the United States, and that the United States needed to wait and see if the Court would quote, "behave", unquote. Well guess what, the Court's now been in operation for a few years and its first case was.Congo..and its second case was.Uganda.and its third case, brand new, was Sudan, via the Security Council. In other words, no Israel, no United States, no attempt to politicize its work.

In fact when an effort was made to push the Court to take action on alleged British war crimes in Iraq (because Britain is a signatory to the International Criminal Court), the Court refused, saying that the British had the capacity to, and in fact did prosecute those responsible for the crimes. So, in other words, the Court is doing exactly, exactly what it was designed to do. It's not politicized and it's not going to go after the United States, its soldiers or its senior officials, because it's not stupid.

My allotted time here tonight is too brief to punch all the obvious holes into the Bush Administration's position. However, let me say this: even if you accept the Administration's argument that the ICC poses a threat of politicized prosecutions, current U.S. policy represents the worst possible approach. If the Administration wants to prevent the Court from undertaking politicized prosecutions or threatening U.S. interest, it needs to engage the Court, and encourage the pursuit of the types of cases that the Court currently has on its docket. If the Court is busy, it won't have time to pursue politicized cases.

Those of us who work on this issue in the United States fully understand that ratification, much less resigning, of the ICC treaty by the United States is simply not going to happen in the next few years. But, there is a great distance between ratification, or signing of the treaty, and the Bush Administration's "scorched earth" policy towards the Court. The best way for the Administration to ensure that the Court remains depoliticized is to support its current work. In the process the Administration could help restore the American legacy of leadership and international justice and ensure that mass murderers and those responsible for the crimes that we just saw on the screen do not walk away scot-free.

Now the recent decision of the Administration to abstain from the Security Council's decision to refer Darfur to the ICC offers some hope of a more rational, thought-out policy towards the International Criminal Court. Of course, the Administration's recent decision to appoint John Bolton as it's next U.S. Ambassador to the UN, a man who called, the un-signing of the International Criminal Court treaty to be the happiest day of his life, does not bode well. But, none the less, I am convinced that the Court's actions in the three cases that it now is confronting will, over time, reassure perhaps the next generation if not the current generation of American leadership that the ICC is and will be a force for hope in the world, a force for change in the world, a force to bring about an end to the types of things we saw.

Now, Thomas Jefferson once said that, "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." And at Citizens for Global Solutions we too are dreaming of a better future, one where the United States is once again an advocate for international justice. Thank you.

Ozong Agborsangaya
Thank you Lynne [Duke], and thank you Bukeni for this very compelling and disturbing film especially thank you for choosing to participate in this discussion.

I should just say that Search for Common Ground is a conflict transformation organization and not an advocacy organization, so we probably come to this discussion from a different angle.

I'd like to frame my comments today by highlighting three main points. The first is to make a brief statement about conflict in the world generally: looking the issue of conflict from a broader dimension and then to share something about the context of this for Search and then to wrap up by saying something specifically about our approach and what we are doing in Congo that could be relevant to this discussion.

When we talk about statistics related to conflict in the world, and particularly in Africa the statistics are very discouraging and sometimes frightening. For example you must have heard about the International Rescue Committee's report that revealed that 4 million people have died in Congo as a result of this war that Bukeni is talking about. That would mean more than any other conflict since WWII. This means that in the six years since the crisis has started the world has lost a population that is equivalent to the population the country of Ireland or one could say eight times the population of Washington D.C. I understand that Washington D.C.'s population is about 500,000 plus so that would be eight times that population.

And one could go on and on if you talk about such conflicts as Sudan, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad, etc. Another helpful statistic regarding today's wars, 93% of all casualties and victims of war are innocent civilians or among the civilian population rather than military personnel. That is the exact inverse of 100 years ago in terms of victims of war. Another statistic, in the Eastern part of Congo the World Bank has sought to measure poverty by inquiring into how many meals people have a day, whether they have access to portable water or electricity. They found that 60% of people ate only one meal a day 94% do not have access to portable water or electricity. I only mention this because poverty is very much a root cause for many of the problems in Africa, and especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Another statistic the World Bank made an assessment that said if you take aggregate government spending all across the world we are spending 170 times the amount we spend on education on military expenditures. Even if the less dramatic sense if you just look at the amount of money we spend on litigation in this country suing each other is the way we deal with our differences.

To Search for Common Ground these are all the result of a win-lose approach to solving conflict, where the best way for me to protect myself against you is to arm myself, or the best way to recover my dignity if you hurt me is for me to sue you and the best way for me to win is for you to lose. Search for Common Ground is an organization that believes that, and we have a twenty-two year track proving this, that there is a better way of dealing with our differences and that those skills can be learned by anybody implemented in any community and any setting.

Our view of conflict is that conflict is normal, so we are not in opposition to conflict as we view it as a matter of expression of difference in the world. How people deal with conflict can lead to danger and destruction or it can also lead to breakthroughs and opportunities. Our approach is to identify where people can work together jointly to make change. Our vision, the kind of world, we see where the natural reaction to difference in the world, the natural reaction one has to when one disagrees with someone, is to reach out and try to better understand that person.

There are a number of co-principles that are visible when we do our work well. Let me just go through them very quickly. We don't see conflict as a good or a bad thing; it is just in how you deal with it. We also believe that conflict can be transformed and peace is a process. One of my favorite ones [principles] is the principle of interdependence; that whether we like it or not, our environmental stability is very dependent on the environmental stability of countries and nations very far from us. So we should be interested in the "Congos" of the world. Even our own physical security today is very reliant on the physical security of people we may never meet or may never know. Our economic stability is very dependent on the economic stability and welfare of people around the world. So interdependence is really a crisis in today's world. We also believe that we have been given quite an opportunity so we believe we should take advantage of these opportunities.

To take you in depth into our programs and how we work I'd like to share something about one of our oldest programs, it is in Burundi in the Great Lakes. We carried many of the lessons from the Burundi program into the DRC. Our DRC program is only about four years old, and our Burundi program is 10 years old. I want to share something about our work in Burundi because it was especially inspired by the situation in Rwanda and I think it's an appropriate time to talk about Rwanda because it is the month of April and it is the, is it the eleventh anniversary of the genocide.

We cannot forget that in a period of three months in Rwanda, 100 days, a total of 800,000 people were killed. We hear this all the time; this is just repeating what we all know. So if you think about the trauma that brings to a society. On Sept. 11 about 3,000 people were killed. This is not a comparison but 3,000 people were killed in one day in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania this brought a horrific tragedy and trauma to this country. In Rwanda the entire population is 8 million. The entire population is less than New York City and 8,000 people were killed everyday for 100 straight days, and we can only imagine the trauma that brings into society.

How is society supposed to deal with that, one tenth of its population lost? So when this happened in Rwanda in 1994 through USAID we would go into Burundi, which is south of Rwanda and it has the same breakdown of Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.. to see if anything could be done to see if the violence could be limited there and to see if something like what happened in Rwanda could be prevented. Over a similar period of time -1992-96 - about 300,000 people were killed in Burundi, but of course it wasn't on the scale of Rwanda, so we are hoping we made a contribution in addition to others who were working there.

What did we do in Burundi, and what is it that we learned that we tired to take into the DRC? Mass media. We started in Burundi by focusing on radio. That was the most culturally appropriate and high leverage point that we could identify. Radio was used very effectively in Rwanda, as you know to promote the genocide, to get people scared of one another and to pit one ethnic group against another. In that part of the world the radio is more than just a medium, it is an incredibly powerful tool in a country where the illiteracy rate is high and where most people in the capital city, let alone outside the capital city, do not have television sets. Radio is more than just an information source it is complete lifeline. How you find out if you can get your crops to the market the next day, how you can find out if there is violence in the nearby village.

A series of independent studies say that 95 percent of the population in Rwanda and Burundi, and the DRC listens to and has access to radio regularly, even if they don't own one. People get together to listen to the radio, so it is an incredibly powerful tool and it was used in a powerful way to turn people against each other. We thought we could use it differently in the other countries in the Great Lakes. When we got involved in Burundi, we worked in a small team of very courageous Hutu and Tutsi journalists to develop the first independent radio outlet in the country and it was also one of the first mechanisms that was multi ethnic. Hutu and Tutsi split right down the middle in the studio, and the goal was to use the radio for the exact opposite means to what was done in Rwanda, to prevent genocide and bind society together to develop reconciliation and peace building.

When the journalists started they received all kinds of threats. Threats of being ethnic traitors, threats from government; both ethnic sides were threatening them. In fact, one of our journalists was killed on the first day the studio was open. This very small core of journalists persisted and developed the studio that had started with one simple kind of programming, just balanced news coverage that was the model. Basically they said we've got something no one else has, we've got Hutu journalists that can go to the Hutu communities, we've got Tutsi journalists that can go to the Tutsi dominated military and when they come back together we can get the real story of what happened and actually it will be a balanced story. And we will put it together and air it and so that's what they did. Although they were getting all of these threats they were also getting reliable reports and everybody from the president to the military colonels to the rebels was listening to these programs while they were threatening them to find out what was going on.

Since this started it really has gone beyond news reporting in Burundi and we do a lot of soap operas including the most popular radio show in Burundi. The soap opera, which has been going on for the last five years, is about a Hutu and a Tutsi family that live side by side and the problems that they deal with on a daily basis and how they resolve them, using a lot of humor and some serious issues. We do use similar soap operas in Congo.

Now just to talk very specifically about our activities in Congo we have two main objectives. Like I said our office in the DRC has been in there for the last four years, we got established right before the inter-Congo dialogue. We are trying to do two things. The first was to really try to enhance information around the transitional process. As you know, Congo has been struggling to implement a very precarious transition process that would lead to elections, the plan is June 2005, but we all know that will not be possible given that nothing is organized.

So how do we try to fulfill this objective of enhancing information and communication in this transitional process? We do something similar to Burundi with the radio programs, other media activities, we train radio personnel. In fact, we do three weekly radio programs specifically dealing with the issues of the ongoing transition, but we also deal with other issues of national importance. For example, child soldiers. We also have a project that's very much focused on the Eastern part of the country. We tried to help consolidate peace in the Eastern part of the country also using radio programming. Also through radio programming we do cross border dialogue, capacity building, and awareness raising campaigns, and networking for local peace actors. These initiatives all aim to enable the population to transform conflict without resorting to violence. We also enhance many of the activities using spots and cultural activities. We have done soccer matches in the past that have included groups from different sides. That's just kind of a quick sense of where we stand and where we start with this kind of work in a country like the DRC. Thank you.

Dr. Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith
Good evening. I'd like to say thank you again to WITNESS and Citizens for Global Solutions and to all of you for being here. But, in particular, I really want to thank you [Bukeni Beck] for highlighting an issue that we very rarely hear about.

I'm a psychologist as you've already heard. I work with the Bellevue NYU program for survivors of torture, which is based in New York City. We've been around since 1995, and we provide medical, psychological and social services to people from all over the world who make their way by hook or by crook to New York City looking for help. Not only do I work with programs for survivors of torture, but I also have experience through another organization that provides services for displaced people in the New York area. I've also done some work in Sierra Leone. So, my experience with this population comes from interaction with not only people who have been affected by child soldiers, but within the populations who were formerly at one point or the other doing atrocities in this capacity.

One of the many things this film highlights is the way wars today impact women and children, particularly women who we don't hear about. When we think about wars, we often think about the physical things, what we see, the dead bodies, people who are traumatized, children holding AK 47s, shooting each other. But what we don't see, and what we don't really hear about are the unseen scars. And those are the things I just want to quickly highlight for you, and then pass it along and open it up for discussion.

When you think about the young women that you just saw on camera, you see their faces, you hear their voices, but you can't even begin to think about some of the things they may have been through. Many of them have suffered multiple losses, loss of family, loss of community, loss of society, loss of their childhood innocence, gone because of the roles that they have been forced to take up. Even though, one of them actually was saying, "Well, you know, I joined," did she really join or was it something she was pushed into? These are also issues that one has to think about.

When we think about the psychological impact of this kind of experience, it's really important to think about it in terms of the individual level, the family level, and how it affects the community and society at large. So, on the individual level for young girls, who are especially targeted in terms of rapes and we're not talking about - and I'm going to be a little graphic here because their experience is graphic - we're not talking about a one time rape event, we're talking about multiple rapes, multiple people raping maybe a girl at one point, what they go through. Anxiety, depression. The one young woman, Mafie, you could just kind of see the flat affect, the tears that lay beneath the surface as she spoke, the nightmares that they go through, the flashbacks of their experiences.

These are some of the psychological impacts. The way it affects their cognitive functioning, they talk about wanting to go back to school. For many people who have had this experience, they may want to go back to school, but then going back to school they find they're unable to focus. Girls who are in this situation, and who are within their communities, going back to school actually becomes a difficult thing because they are lost where they were in terms of the educational system. They are way behind, so that they are set up in classes with children younger than they are. They are not able to focus and concentrate, and they often are rejected by their peers.

"You were a rebel" or "You were a fighter"; "I'm scared of you; I want no part of you." That kind of social interaction is something that becomes now denied to them. And then there is the next level, the family level, where many of them have lost members of their families, or the family roles have now been changed where back in the old days it was the adults directing children, telling them what to do. And we see this in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Now the adults are too afraid of the children. You know, "I'm not going to tell you, 'don't do this, don't' do that', god, you might shoot me. You might do all kinds of things because we know you've already done these kinds of things." One mother talked about when her daughter left, what the consequence was to her. She got beaten up because the family is now known as having children who have participated in these kinds of heinous activities.

And then of course this also goes up to citizen community level, where now even when the children come back and they want to engage in the community, they are rejected because they are known as collaborators, perpetrators of crimes.

One thing that does not get really touched, but I know does happen is young girls who come back pregnant as a result of this experience. What happens to those children? I know for a fact that in Sierra Leone, children born of these relationships have now been being described as "rebel babies." There is a concern that there is going to be a whole generation of young children coming up who are stigmatized for life. How do we begin to address the needs of all these levels of needs?

As we think about the importance of the ICC and the role that it has to play to stop this, we also seriously have to think about what we can do in terms of rehabilitation and reintegration. How do we now take these young people, who are growing up and turning into adults and help them become people who can give back to their communities.

Richard Dicker
Thank you. And I do want to express my appreciation to WITNESS and Bukeni [Beck] individually for putting together the film that we saw. I think it is such a powerful tool for conveying in a very accessible way what goes on in conflict situations in terms of trauma and torture of human beings and the need the for some kind of judicial process to address in some way the crimes that occur. Much thanks for that and I hope the film gets very broad dissemination in viewing in this country and other places around the world.

Let me start first by saying something about the recruitment and conscription of child soldiers and what role the International Criminal Court may play in addressing that particular conduct. The International Criminal Court Treaty - and I don't want to talk too much like a lawyer here - makes the recruitment and conscription of child soldiers under the age of 15 a crime that can be prosecuted in situations as we saw and in many other situations around the world where the use of child soldiers is quite widespread. We heard indeed in Sierra Leone and in other conflict situations all too often children are brought into the armed forces. With the ICC statute, that conduct will become a crime. But not to prosecute the young women we saw interviewed in the film. I think it is important to stress the need to prosecute those at the most senior levels of responsibility who have organized and brought others into the armed forces in large numbers.

I want to say a little bit about what the ICC will be looking at in terms of the crime of conscription and recruitment. There is a phrase in the ICC Treaty that says 'participate actively'-child soldiers that participate actively and specifically those not only directly involvement in combat but also used in activities like spying, sabotage, and courier work. I think it is important to broaden out from just involvement in armed conflict directly to other forms of use of children as criminal activity.

Also, I want to talk a little bit about voluntary enlistment, because we saw some reference to that in the film. From the perspective of the ICC it doesn't matter if children voluntarily want to join. There is no defensive consent to the crime so that if a militia leader or a government leader says 'Yeah, but these children voluntarily joined up.' There is no compulsion here that in terms of what the ICC is looking at as criminal activity is NOT a sufficient defense. So I'm hoping that in the first cases that are likely to emerge as has been referred to coming out of both the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda we will see prosecution of leaders responsible for the crime.

I agree with all of the comments Charles Brown [Citizens for Global Solutions] made in regard to the U.S. government's approach to the International Criminal Court. I am not going to repeat it. I was struck by comments in the film that spoke, and Bukeni himself spoke to this, about limiting or ending impunity. The reality, folks, is that up till now, for all the killings and rapes and recruitment of child soldiers in the Congo, not one person has credibly been brought to justice. It is more likely that one would be brought to justice for a crime here in the District of Columbia than for mass murder or rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And that's why an institution like the ICC is needed to end any impunity in situations where the national courts are unwilling or unable to do the job. That is the role of the ICC and that's why we heard from many of the people interviewed in the film a high degree of expectation towards this court in helping to limit impunity. That's its role and it plays that role in those situations where there are no alternatives.

I want to say something along the lines of the difficult and the enormous task this court faces to conduct criminal prosecution for crimes against humanity, war crimes and in some situations genocide. It would [difficult] for a prosecutor either here in this city or a prosecutor in Brazil, or a prosecutor in any one of a number of countries, for an international prosecutor investigating crimes that occur hundreds if not thousands of miles away from where the court is based. It is tough work, and I guarantee you there will be shortcomings and flaws. I think we've got to accept those shortcomings and flaws and doubtless the Bush Administration will try to make as much hay as it can over those shortcomings and flaws, but those shortcomings and flaws are better than to what the alternative is, and that is impunity.

Now I also want to say that I think all of us have a responsibility to look carefully and critically at the work the ICC does. There will be ways that we need to articulate our views for steps that the court can take to do its difficult job better. I saw Bukeni and others refer to the need for field offices. It's important for this court to locate itself as close as it can to those it is mandated to serve and bring justice to. One thing we as civil society have a role to play is pressing the court itself to do a better job in being in-touch with and serving the people it is tasked to protect and bring justice to. I'll stop there. Thanks so much.

Following the Discussion Panel, the event was opened for a question and answer session

Lynne Duke
Okay, thank you all for being so attentive, and I am sure there are questions out there so rather than us take up more time talking let's here from you. Yes, step up to the mike.

Maya Ashmira
My name is Maya Ashmira and I'm President of the Global Fund for Children, and we are a global grant-making organization making grants to community based educational NGO's globally around the world. I have a quick question for Mr. Beck and the work you are doing within the NGO [world] and working with the children. You said in the video that about 400 children that you've gotten back into the community. What kind of services exactly are you providing, and how are you reintegrating them into school? Are you providing bridge schools as a non-formal education first and then putting them into public school? Are you providing scholarships? Are you providing micro enterprise programs for their families so they aren't enticed back into, into the military? So I'm just curious, and just a minute answer, overview that you can give.

Lynne Duke
Yes [to Beck], that's for you.

Bukeni Tete Waruzi Beck
Thank you very much for the question. We have 300 children, child soldiers from the camp. We have taken them from the camp to their local community. We are just a local NGO who is working with so many difficulties. We are a working in a situation where we do not have support, but we must do that, because these children need to be taken back home. When we take them from the camp they have many problems, which are, they need basic assistance and most of them are almost ill. But we have a transit center where we accommodate these children and waiting for their re-unification with their family.

We are tracing family, but when we take them to the center we ask them what can they need to be assisted? Some of them say 'I want to go to school'. There are not all these children that have this chance to be taken to school due to the problem of financial assistance what we have. We have some who, we have just a few donors, a few partners who are working with us in helping these children. Another problem in the reintegration process is, it is very difficult because we always think taking them to school is the solution. But what happens now? Some of children that I take myself, most of them did not succeed at school in the first year. They told me, 'we took the wrong way, why did we go to school? I spent one year at school, but what have nothing.' That's a problem. What would be very important for these children to be really, reintegrated into school, that's a problem.

The second problem is about these children who have been into combat. Allow me to give you just a small example. These girl soldiers, in the movie, I proposed of them to have a test of HIV. All of them refused, but two girl soldiers accepted. I took them to the hospital they took their blood and after two days the doctor called me to give me result. He told me your girls are positive. One was 13, another was 14. I called these girls and told them the results. They said what does it mean? I said you have to die after maybe three, four five years, I don't know. They didn't understand anything, but one asked me, 'now what about others? Meaning other combatants. I said I don't know about them. So when we do reintegration, there is a problem of many programs. We do not check very well what the problem is and how to come in assistance of these children. We need some more research of this issue of child soldiers.

Lynne Duke
 It sounds like we're talking about an issue of more funding and more partners as well correct?

Bukeni Beck
Yes, we have WITNESS for example, who is helping us in making video. And in other directions, we are just a partner with what is called JRS, Jesuit Refugee Services, who is helping us with a little bit project. But we do not have more funds to help these children. They need help, but we do not have enough, we can provide just a little bit what we can.

Lynne Duke
 I'm sorry one more quick comment.

Ozong Agborsangaya
I just wanted to make a quick comment on that. It's really a desperate and challenging situation. I want to share some studies that I was a part of some years ago, in Congo actually with regard to this. Sometimes it seems that it might even be more helpful to leave child soldiers where they are when there in the transit centers because to try to reintegrate child soldiers when there are no alternatives is very challenging. There are instances of where child soldiers are taken back to the community and they try to put them back in schools and there are cases of violence at home and violence at schools. It's very difficult when there are no resources and there are no alternatives for these child soldiers when they're demobilized. And I'm sure you (directed to Adeyinka) can talk about when there's no type of social counseling and all of that the kind of trauma that they leave with.

Dr. Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith
I agree exactly with the issue you're talking about - them not getting anything out of school. When you think about everything they've been through, even though on the one level they want to go back to school, on the other level just taking in that information when there's so much other emotional stuff going on.

Lynne Duke
Gentleman in the blue, you had a question?

Betik Combano
Yes, my name is Betik Combano, I am a native of the Congo. I have a question. I am here working for the American Foreign Service Committee. My question is: what is the level of coordination among local NGO's and international NGO's in terms of assessing the needs and coordinating and achieving the goals and objectives?

Lynne Duke
That sounds like another question for you Bukeni. You mean directly in Eastern Congo with his programs, correct?

Betik Combano
Yes

Bukeni Beck
The Eastern part of Congo didn't have a chance to get many international organizations because there was some areas where there was no access. This was a result of an insecure situation. For example, the South region. Because the Western part was in peace, the Eastern part was in trouble. And, some in the Eastern part have been controlled by militias but we have some progress in security issues.

Some international NGO came, but there is a problem with international NGOs. They have their own programs, and when they have their own programs it is difficult to change that program. But when they are in the field, they are facing many new problems. What they can solve? They have direct budget for that. So we as local NGOs do not have many opportunities to have financial support, but the joint work that we do is really valuable in terms of helping victims and working in conflict and post-conflict situations.

I, myself, have contacted so many international organizations to be in partner with them. It was very difficult. Most of them respond to me saying "okay we understand and we are very interested but your area is still an insecure situation. How we can work with you?"

Those are the majority response we have. That's a problem of coordinating local NGOs and international NGOs in the field. Maybe this question should be also answered by another one who is working with an international NGO, to say why they don't work with local NGOs and why their programs are not flexible.

(Laughter)

Richard Dicker
I don't know if Bukeni was pointing a finger at organizations like Human Rights Watch (laughter) but I'm not one to duck a challenge. Let's just say from our perspective the work that we do in terms of human rights documentation and fact-finding could not be done if we didn't work in close partnership with international and local NGOs. It's as simple as that. All our success in gathering facts and frankly our success in implementing recommendations and plans is critically dependent upon an ability to partner with local NGOs. One fact I just want to bring to people's attention in relationship to the ICC is that a couple of Human Rights Watch group that deal with victims by the name of REGRESS, which is based in the United Kingdom. Last week in Bukabo - which I think is in the Southern [DRC]- REGRESS held a seminar on the ICC and local NGOs that brought to Bukabo some officials from the ICC. I think there's a need for much more partnership between international and local NGOs then we've been engaged in before, a real need for that.

Bukeni Beck
Okay, I know that we are coordinating with Human Rights Watch but Human Rights Watch is not a funding organization. If we are working for advocacy and lobbying on this issue that means when we make reports on this issue we must send to Human Rights Watch and Human Rights Watch can also raise a voice and say this is what happened please do something. But we need some financial support, which now we don't have.

Charlie Brown
If I could just throw in one more thing on this, and that is something that everybody in this room can actually do on this issue, and that is let your members of Congress know that you don't think it's necessary that U.S. aid be tied to making sure that a certain percentage of it be looped back threw U.S. organizations and U.S. institutions (applause from audience). As someone who used to work for an organization that received U.S. government grants, I can tell you, and someone who no longer does, and therefore who is free to bite the hand that no longer feeds me.let me say quite frankly that it is an abomination. For example, if you're in an organization that takes USAID money you are required to use American institutions as much as possible to buy airplane tickets, all sorts of things. It is an absurd notion, and as a result the other thing is you are required to adhere to security regulations that are set up by the U.S. government. You are also required now, thanks to the Bush Administration, to put "funded by U.S. government or USAID" on the side of every car you drive and everything else you do, which means you are making yourself a moving target in many parts of the world. Somehow Congress has got in its mind that, and it is Congress mainly in fairness to USAID, that foreign aid is actually designed to aid American businesses, and that's just ridiculous and we need to put a stop to it.

(Applause)

Ozong Agborsangaya
I just want to say one thing about Search. We are actually a locally driven international organization. For example, we have 357 staff, 80 percent of those are local nationals only 7 percent are U.S. nationals, and the rest are third country nationals. So we are an organization that takes very seriously investing in the local people and local culture.

Lynne Duke
Next question.right here.

Gabrielle Barrow
Gabrielle Barrow from IFIS an organization who has democracy promoting activities in the Great Lakes Area, and around the world. The news today or this week out of Rwanda is that with the opening of the tribunals there is a flood of refugees heading towards Burundi and towards Congo to evade justice as much as possible. So it seems clear that the people perpetrating these crimes are going to get out of it in every way that they can. It seems to me in the case of the children soldiers of Congo that they make an ideal target for these criminals, whether it is eliminating these children or threatening them or continuing to harasses and intimidate and inflict violence on them. Has this been identified as a problem for this group of people in the Congo? And if it has, what has been done about it?

Lynne Duke
In other words the question is the children themselves who might be the main witnesses about their recruitment.One bit of context that maybe you all are not aware of, and I think it is not going to far to say, is that every member of the interim government in Congo right now comes from a military force. That is basically a rebel force, including the current president of Congo who was one of the leaders of his father's rebel force. They all used child soldiers and they all recruited child soldiers. So when we talk about impunity, it is very thick, it is very entrenched in society.

Ozong Agborsangaya
I really want to underscore that, because it presents an enormous challenge to the International Criminal Court not only for the issue of child soldiers but also for any other kind of issue. It kind of hamstrings the court, but I think its very difficult to know whether there is support from the international community as well because many of the donors are very attached to the transitional government they have working out. I doubt that you would find anyone in the international community, the donors who would be supportive of bringing Kabili or any of the other guys to book because they have the responsibility of moving a transition. So it is a big challenge since many of the perpetrators are in the government right now.

Lynne Duke
(To Richard Dicker) Do we know of any structures that are being put into place for protecting.it's so early?

Richard Dicker
Yeah, you put your finger on a huge issue that is a problem for the courts, national and international, that are trying to bring powerful perpetrators to justice: the protection of witnesses. That is an enormous issue for the Rwanda tribunal for the Yugoslav tribunal as well. So I think there needs to be a lot of focus on the steps that the International Criminal Court will actually put into place in order to see that witnesses do not become further victimized by those that the court is pursuing. But let me flag something that is a concern to me, and that is the protection of witnesses not seen by this court or any other as a luxury item that should get attention only if there is extra money around to do it. I think it's got to be at the core of the mission of the court, and I think it's up to us to see that that happens in terms of the practice of the ICC

Dr. Adyekina Akulsure-Smith
And just to add to that from a psychological piece, to also ensure that the witnesses are not re-traumatized because testifying can be traumatizing so it is important that there is social support put in place.

Charles Brown
And I could just add to that. The issue of both witnesses and victims is one that is a real challenge for the Court. For the reasons Richard outlined, but also because the Court has not been given the resources to really handle this. There is a voluntary victim's trust fund that has been set up to handle taking care of victims of the crimes of the Court, and it's not funded right now with the exception of some voluntary contributions. More needs to be done on that side as well.

Lynne Duke
Another question over here?

Caitlin Williams
Hi, my name is Caitlin Williams; I'm a graduate student at Georgetown University fairly new to this topic, but becoming more and more interested in it. My question is for Adeyinka. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit more about what the effects of serving in the military are on the cognitive development of these children. Especially, in terms of this being the time in your life when you start to get a sense of your self taking on responsibility.

Dr. Adeyinka Akulsure-Smith
Well for some of these children who have actually been through many losses, one of the things the military can seem to provide is a sense of family and a sense of belonging. However, the trade-off is that they now become raised in a setting where violence is the norm, it's the expectation. So one of the issues with being integrated back into society is that they've come to live by the gun, and expecting that when things don't work out they can resort to violence. So yes, there is definite interruption in development in terms of moral behavior and relationships.

Lynne Duke
Bukeni, you had something to say earlier, is it still relevant now?

Bukeni Beck
I just wanted to say that I think the International Criminal Court would be helpful in our country because of elections. Let's take the case of Democratic Republic of Congo. I'm 34 years old and I have never voted. I've never voted because there were no elections and now I hope to have the chance to vote, but who is the candidate? We don't have many choices. The International Criminal Court will be helpful because it tries to clean and clear up things. Who might be eligible? That is the first question.

The second question is about protecting witnesses and victims. That is very important. There is no reason why the International Criminal Court can not say it will be impossible to protect the victims and witness. The International Criminal Court must protect witnesses and victims. This call is not to support by just ratifying, but the International Criminal Court must have money, must have human resources. This is a call to support what is needed. Support must be given to the International Criminal Court in order to do a better job, and if the International Criminal Court makes a mistake in those prosecutions than will be a disappointment to all of us. But we really think that the International Criminal Court will be able to do a better job. That is why we need your support.

Lynne Duke
Question over here?

Laura Englebrecht
Hi, my name is Laura Englebrecht, I am doing independent consulting on Congo now, but I worked for two years 2001-2003 at the Political and Human Rights office in the U.S. Embassy in Congo. I wrote the famous report on human rights for the State Department. I spent quite a bit of time going all over Eastern Congo doing research for that report and duties for the Embassy but one of the things that I ran across and continue to run across as I do consulting is that all of the different programs that we are talking about for the demobilization of child soldiers, witness protection for prosecution of war crimes, all of that requires a certain environment of law and order. If you arrest criminals you need to have police that guard the jail as has happened. If you have trial you have to have police to protect those that testify, etc. What that points to is a real need that is being ignored at this point, and that is a reform and training and payment of police forces. It is something that NGOs typically don't like to deal with. It is not as easy to deal with as some of the other issues, but looking at it from my perspective, it has become the essential sticking point for allowing other programs to unfold as they should. So my question is for the panel, what is the connection between prosecution of war crimes, demobilization of child soldiers, and the unpopular, but necessary reform of the police and army?:

Lynne Duke
 Well I would just venture into the idea that there has not been stability in much of Congo, for let's say three decades at least, and things got really bad with war breaking out in '96,'97, '98 and onward in the East. As Bukeni has said it is even more dysfunctional in the absence of security, the absence of structures of law and order, the absence of accountability through whatever structures may exist. Corruption is a problem, the infrastructure that would allow the protection or even the gathering of witnesses to function, just does not exist. Someone asked about protecting witnesses, well as soon as someone gets a visit at their hut from someone that clearly isn't from there, they are clearly a witness as soon as they go away from their village. It is going to be very difficult to protect people under the circumstances that prevail in Congo today. Does anyone else want to add?

Ozong Agborsangaya
I think that you're emphasizing one of the biggest gaps to the ongoing process to civilize the Congo. From a security standpoint it is probably the most important thing.the professionalization of all the security forces, and it is probably pretty behind in that regard as part of the one thing discussed at the Global Agreement, there has not been adequate progress. One worries if elections could be successful without that being completed. It is a major challenge right now.

Lynne Duke
I think that we should also remember that the insecurity of this region and the deterioration of the region goes back in a sense to the original failure of the international community, including the US, in dealing with the question of the "genocidires" from Rwanda who were operating in the Congo, and whose presence was a large reason for the cycle of war that has plunged Eastern Congo on a complete downturn. So there hasn't been a demonstration that if dealing with security and armed forces, getting them properly trained and so forth has been a priority in the past so that is a huge challenge.

Lynne Duke
Oh, more questions, yes?

Josephine Valencia
Good evening, just want to thank all of you and commend you for your good work and your commitment to a topic which we should all be more knowledgeable about. My name is Josephine Valencia; I do work with USAID, Displaced Children and Orphans Fund and also for The George Washington University. I believe that we can do a better job to better understand what are some of the key components from your perspective of what a good program is, particularly programs that meet psycho-social needs of children who are facing reintegration. We understand that psycho-social support is simply at the individual level, but needs to address individuals, families, and whole communities. So I'm just interested in finding out more from you and your perspective what those key factors - for example, community participation or economic incentives, things like this. Another topic in addition to that, in the video there was a short clipping about the role of the church and faith in the reintegration process of the youth. Unfortunately, I think from a Western perspective this is something that gets a lot less attention than it would in another part of the world. I am interested in hearing your perspectives on the role this would play in reintegration programs.

Lynne Duke
Any takers:

Dr. Adeykina Aksulure-Smith
I think any program that one tries to create to address those issues, first of all has to bring in the cultural piece. Some of the programs they have used in Sierra Leone that have used religious aspects for cleansing, bringing in the traditional, cultural beliefs using religion, song and dance, things that are so culturally fundamental that are usually taken away because they are broken down, need to be brought in to rebuild, not only the individual but also as you were pointing out the family and community.

I think your question is good, and we must not forget that with these children, some children integrated into armed forces, there are forces that are using witchcraft. They have some traditional rituals in the integration, and what children are subject to, and when they are in the military life, they are using other kinds of traps and other things to really become a soldier. There are some children who are obliged to go and kill their own parents. Kill your own parents and you will be pitiless, and when you do that you will be really a soldier.

So now at reintegration these aspects are not taken into consideration. There is some example from Mozambique they did cleansing of some children, but in Congo this has not yet happened. But it is very important to do this process. Secondly is the role of social leaders. In Africa we have so many followers so churches play major roles in reintegration of these children. How? Because it is a kind of bridge. Children who have been victims of something can come into the church and be consoled there. Children who committed crimes can be consoled there. Churches seem to be kind of bridge between local community and children.

This aspect also may be taken into consideration in the reintegration process. What role can churches play? Since we are Africans who believe in Christ and this shows that local realities are very important in the reintegration process and if some programs failed it is because they did not take into consideration local realities that may play major roles in reintegration.

Lynne Duke
We have two panelists who need to depart to catch a plane, but we'd like to thank them for their participation. Richard Dicker and Adeykina, thank you. There is coffee and dessert and other panelists will be around to answer questions. Thank you!

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