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Susan, sixteen years of age, captures the brutalization children suffer at the hands
of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda in the following testimony:
One boy tried to escape but he was caught. His hands were tied and then they
made us, the other new captives, kill him with a stick. I felt sick. I knew this boy from
before; we were from the same village. I refused to do it and they told me they would
shoot me. They pointed a gun at me, so I had to do it… I see him in my dreams and
he is saying I killed him for nothing, and I am crying.
The emotional scars of war are more difficult to measure. A nationwide survey of 3,000
children in Rwanda in 1995 revealed the following: over 95 percent of the children
witnessed massacres; over a third had seen family members murdered; almost all
believed they would die; nearly two-thirds were threatened with death; and over 80
percent had had to hide to protect themselves,many for up to eight weeks or longer.
And even those who’ve survived war have persisting threats to life and health. In 64
countries, an estimated 110 million anti-personnel mines lie in wait for unsuspecting
footfalls. These cost between $3 and $10 to buy and between $300 and $1,000 to
remove. About 800 humans die every month because of them, with thousands more
maimed for life.
It is more than just numbers:
“I’ve seen people get their hands cut off, a 10 year old girl raped and then die, and so
many men and women burned alive. So many times I just cried inside my heart
because I didn’t dare cry out loud.”
- Grace, 14-year-old girl, abducted by a
rebel group in Sierra Leone
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