Pens not Guns – Liberian Child Soldiers Need Hope
As Conflict Ends, 15,000 Children Still Armed and Traumatized

Washington DC -- The launch today of UNICEF’s ‘Back to School Liberia’ campaign follows a Halloween weekend where thousands of American children were ‘trick-or-treating for UNICEF’, raising millions of dollars to help the world’s children.

While American children were dressed up for Halloween for fun, 300,000 children across the globe dressed as soldiers for war. Among them are 15,000 Liberian child soldiers still fighting for rebel groups today.

“The number of children, boys and girls, still carrying weapons, murdering and raping in Liberia is astounding,” said Harpinder Athwal, Peace and Security Program Manager, Citizens for Global Solutions. “President Charles Taylor has now left Liberia, a new government under Gyude Bryant is in place, and the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission is in the country. We now need a sustained international effort to help these children get their childhood back. UNICEF’s ‘Back to School’ campaign will go some way in helping more children out of the battlefield and into the classroom.”

Children as young as nine were recruited by the previous government of Charles Taylor to fight against rebels. It is estimated that up to 70 percent of government and rebel forces are compromised of Liberian children; approximately 80 percent of these children are armed. While many of these children joined voluntarily out of desperation to escape poverty, lured by basic necessities such as food and water, the majority of children were abducted and forcibly recruited under threat of death against themselves or their families. Some are even forced to kill their own family so they have no homes to return too.

Harpinder Athwal commented, “It is now the responsibility of the international community and the United States to ensure that further recruitment of child soldiers is put to an end. There cannot be peace and stability in this country until all the child soldiers are demobilized and rehabilitated.

“This, however, is an enormous job. The work of the UN and NGO organizations, such as UNICEF, are doing a great deal to build the education institutions and provide training to bring normalcy and education back to the lives of Liberia’s children. However, funding remains scarce. If these children are to be given the chance to have a better future, and obtain educations to lead their nation’s development in the future, the international community will need to ensure that resources and funding are available to support campaigns such as the ‘Back to School’ initiative.”

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Notes to Editors:
For more details on UNICEF’s ‘Back to School’ Liberia campaign please see http://www.unicef.org/media/index.html

Attached see a briefing paper on Liberian child soldiers and recommendations on what the U.S. and international community should be doing to ensure that child soldiers are effectively demobilized and rehabilitated.
Also attached is an account of a child soldier from Sierra Leone, Ibrahim, and what is immediate needs were post-conflict.

The World Federalist Association coordinates the Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court, composed of legislative and governmental affairs offices of thirty American non-governmental organizations committed to the cause of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The WICC supports and provides materials and information for education and advocacy about the Court. For more information, visit http://www.wfa.org/wicc.html.