Hot Boys: the search for Africa's lost children

Liberia’s two-part, 14 years civil conflict is a story of much tragedy and disaster. More than three hundred thousand lives were lost, and a million people were made displaced into refugee camps in neighboring countries. Yet the greater marker of the war’s damaging effect is the immense population of 60,000 children, according to a Human Watch International 2008 report, that were, either abducted and conscripted, or forced to become child soldiers due to some unforeseen circumstances.

Trained to be efficient killers, these Child soldiers committed wide spread atrocities; raping and murdering people of all ages as they were instructed by their commanders, even while under the influence of dangerous drugs administered to them. Because they were kids between the ages of six and fourteen they were easily influenced by their war lords captors who they saw as parents. But the sad story is, after fourteen years of being misused and abused by these malicious warlords, many of these child combatants were just as easily disposed of as they were recruited. Seen as embarrassment to their ex-commanders who are all now well respected politicians, they were totally silence by abandonment.

In fact when Charles Taylor, chief warlord and the father of anarchy, testified before the International Court on Sierra Leone in the Hague on charges of war crimes and human right violation committed in the Sierra Leone crisis by the RUF rebels which he’d supported, he denied ever recruiting any child soldiers, and that he had in no time used children as his soldiers. Of course it’s a statement of perjury that every patriotic Liberian knows wouldn’t have passed in a Liberian court. But even the very programs, designed to cater to these severely affected post traumatic child combatants, have denied them every opportunity for rehabilitation and reintegration leaving them languishing without specific programs to address their basic needs

Lost and weary from their destitute, these wandering child soldiers have now become the hottest commodity in West Africa’s wars. Most common of all was the Ivory Coast rebellion in which they were the most sought after hot boys!

The migration of War in West Africa

In 1996 the UN/ECOMOG backed disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) program was implemented to set the stage for presidential and parliamentary elections in Liberia. Several ex- combatants were targeted for the process, which was intended to restore peace to the West African nation. But considering the severe post traumatic stress disorder suffered by many of these abandoned child combatants who had fought for over the period of five years, the programs were too short to address this severity.  

The UN Security Council resolution 1509(c) (2003) mandates UNMIL to: “develop an action plan for the overall implementation of a disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, and repatriation (DDRR) program for all armed parties, with particular attention to the special needs of child combatants...in the DDRR process”.

Several human right activists had observed that despite the logistical challenges of disarmament and demobilization, reintegration—the acquisition of civilian status and sustainable employment and income—is considered the most difficult phase of any DDR process. An Institute for Security Studies (ISS) paper calls it “the Achilles heel of DDR.” Reintegrating into Civil Society is so difficult that it requires longer term programs while different criteria should be applied to special groups so that resources can be allotted for those who really need them.

However, by the time the NPFL rebel leader, Charles Taylor, became president in 1997, most of these children combatants were totally forgotten. Languishing without specific programs to help rehabilitate and reintegrate them, thousand of child soldiers crossed over into Guinea, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leon and Ghana where they were later re-recruited by mercenary Scotts because of their vulnerability. The inability of the DDR program to rehabilitate these children made them an easy prey once again for warlords. And two years later, a newly organized rebel group called Liberia United for Reconciliation and Development (LURD) attacked the Taylor led government using these very children as fighters.

This attack from Guinea by LURD rebels began the second phase of the Liberian civil war. Many local NGO’s blamed the outbreak on the DDR failure to meet the specific needs of child combatants. So wandering as ruthless thugs, many of these disaffected child soldiers became easily re-recruited, thus, have led to the migration of war in West Africa.

Six years later, after the failure of the first DDR program to address the problem of former child soldiers’ (FCS) rehabilitation and reintegration, another established program, known as the Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration (DDRR), created to address the new problem of ex-combatants after the second phase of the Liberian civil war, have been considered another fiasco. With more than 80 million US dollars spend during the entire process thousands of child-combatants ended unaccounted for.

A critical analysis of the Ivory Coast crisis is a clear example of the migration of war, as thousand of Liberian ex-combatants were re-recruited from refugees’ camps around Africa to destabilize another neighboring country (After Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea).  With thousand of these ex-child soldiers now full grown mercenary, it is difficult to track these lost children of Africa.  I’ve learned from former fighters seeking refuge in the Buduburam refugee settlement, that several hundred of their friends were re-recruited for the Ivory Coast rebellion, and that most have been reported missing in action even after the rebellion. One of the most notorious child soldier, the Special Security Service boss under Taylor, Betjeman Yeatan, who was recruited at the age of six years old and went on to be the most feared man after Taylor, was even re- recruited to fight in the Ivory Coast along with many of his men from the Taylor’s regime.

Ivory coast Bloody bath

Closing the flood gate

With several thousand of such people unaccounted for around West Africa, there yet remain a more serious impediment to sustainable peace and security in the region. West African government can no longer remain ignominious to this pressing issue of ex-child soldiers. As most of these disaffected people have already grown into young adults, they post a more serious risk to democratization and sustainability of peace in the region.

Today’s problem of spontaneous youth violence in our society is a clear demonstration to government that the risk ahead is threatening if nothing is done to address the problem. With thousand of venerable war affected young people out there left un-rehabilitated and finding it difficult to reintegrate, one way in which government can address this ominous future threat is, not by setting up a huge bureaucratic agency like the previous two DRR’s had done, which is platform for failure in such situation, but by working through several young people initiative programs that focus on Rehabilitation and reintegration.

One such group is the Initiative for the Development of Former Child Soldiers (IDEFOCS). Today, considering the challenges faced by thousand abandoned ex-child soldiers and the possible of the migration of war in West Africa, the group have plan to implement its designed Survey, De-traumatization, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration program designed in Ghana to help transform the lives of thousands of former child soldiers in Liberia.

IDEFOCS founder and executive director, Morris Madati’s parents were killed before his eyes at the beginning of the civil war, and he was later abducted and conscripted by a band of rebels in 1991. Later, in 1997, when Taylor became president he attained to the position of an operation man (third-in-command) on the president’s motorcade, and served in this position for 3 years.

“Finally, in 2000 when the LURD rebels begin to advance on the city I gathered some money and managed to escape to Ghana,” Morris tells me pensively in his office why working on programs for former child soldiers.

 According to Morris, it was the difficulty of reintegration in the midst of stigmatization and the challenge of re-recruitment that inspired him in 2003 to rally several former child soldiers and organized themselves into an imitative to vehemently protest against the re-recruitment exercise and advocate for program for the development of FCS from the UNHCR. 

According to the Program Coordinator of the organization, Brocks Pokai, “The SDRR was designed to buttress the UN/government DDRR short term programs intended for FCS. The Metric was subsequently designed to be more economical, and to have full impact through long term program that would address the specific needs of FCS as stipulated within the UN Resolution 1509”

IDEFOCS executive director was selected in 2010 as a fellow of the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder, Colorado, USA, based on the basic social services IDEFOCS have provided for FCS and women associated with fighting forces. Joining about 26 entrepreneurs from around the world, Morris Matadi had had the opportunity to be mentored by world class investors and mentors on how to develop the initiative and stood before a great crowd of investors to present the plight of thousand of his abandoned comrades.

And according to the program director, the organization has successfully rehabilitated more than thousands FCS and WAFF with close to $ 200,000 dollars since the organization was founded in 2003. And with further plan to rehabilitate more FCS and WAFF, IDEFOCS had proposed through a business model developed at the Unreasonable conference in Colorado, USA, a $ 300,000 dollars worth of investment on a Botanical Reintegration Village Agriculture program that will serve as the first FCS academic.

There are several other community-based, civil society organizations that the government can used to close the flood gate of the migration of war, with thousands of disaffected ex-child soldiers still languishing around the sub region awaiting impending spark of conflict.