Military trainers learn to protect children

Children in Sierra Leone have suffered amputation, rape and death at the hands of young rebels, some of them also children, too full of drugs to realise the savagery of their actions. The cruelty they have experienced has prompted the Swedish chapter of Save the Children (SCF-Sweden) to equip West African military instructors to train troops in methods to protect children before, during and after wars. The seminar for military officers from 14 of the 16 ECOWAS member countries began on Monday at the French-sponsored Zambakro Peacekeeping School in Cote D'Ivoire. The 26 participants will exchange experiences, review case studies, study child development issues, engage in role play and, at the end of the two-week programme, produce a training manual to be used in their armies. "They are very open to integrating the work of NGOs" into their training cycles, Una McCauley, SCF's regional administrator for child rights and child protection, said on Sunday of the Ivorian military. During the programme, 16 child victims of war will act as resource persons and lecture the officers. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has fielded peacekeeping troops in Sierra Leone and Liberia, has supported the initiative by Save the Children which, in 1993, launched the first programme to train the Swedish military on child protection. The US $337,797 programme is funded by Canada, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Roman Catholic church. The ECOWAS mechanism for conflict prevention and conflict management considers child protection to be at the centre of its development strategy and plans to use the seminar's training module for its own peacekeepers, the ECOWAS Peace Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), IRIN learnt. Save the Children says sensitising troops to the needs of children during conflict remains a crucial task given that 52 percent of West Africa's people are under 18 years old. The idea is that soldiers trained to protect children will ensure that if minors are inevitably caught up in war, their experiences will be less traumatic because of the sensitivity training soldiers receive. Save the Children said that ECOMOG soldiers who served in Liberia often went to great lengths to protect children and recognising this can but have a positive impact on the child protection programme. "We want to reinforce that type of behaviour," McCauley said.