Child protection expert Dr Mike Wessells of Columbia University recently visited New Zealand as a guest of ChildFund New Zealand to share his expertise and draw attention to the plight of the world’s so-called lost generation — formerly recruited child soldiers. “Commanders recruit children because they are readily available, easy to terrorise and manipulate, and provide excellent sources of free labour. In Sierra Leone, for example, boys and girls were abducted to fight on all sides, and injected with drugs or given alcohol to give them courage,” says Dr Wessells. Surprisingly, girls comprise 40 per cent of all child combatants in armed groups, where they are used as porters, cooks, sex slaves and fighters. When the fighting stops, however, girls are often left out of the formal processes of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration. One of the reasons is that many abducted girls have no weapons to turn in to prove they were in an armed group. In Sierra Leone, six years after the war ended, ChildFund has identified several thousand formerly recruited girls, who have received no reintegration support and live in very difficult circumstances with many trying to provide for children they have had as a result of being raped. They suffer rights violations on a significant scale, being feared by local villagers and their own families because of their unruly behaviour. Girls have reported experiencing anguish, flashbacks, shame, and being unable to have normal …

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