What shall we do for war children?

As the new principal of Divine Mercy Catholic School, a highly populated school north of Toronto, I busy myself consulting with my two vice-principals about the supervision schedule for the teachers, discussing how to keep the older children occupied at break-time, and worrying that we may have given too much freedom to the six-year olds in Grade One. The other day, some of them were seen climbing the fence that separates the school from the vast housing estate around the school. Some have been throwing stones at the homes-not a good way to make good neighbours. We are thinking of shrinking the boundary so that the little children can play closer to the school building where roving security cameras can monitor them at all times. Meanwhile, we will likely shell out some good money to install new basketball nets for the older students to use during break. However, even as I wrestle with these numerous issues, my mind keeps slipping back to the presentation at the Hyatt Hotel in Seattle by Shannon Owor, the Executive Director of the Vancouver-based Charles Owor Foundation.
The presentation dealt with a study comparing the situation in Gulu, Mukono and Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia.

The study found that death rate in Gulu is comparable to Kosovo at the height of the civil war in Yugoslavia. However, the Gulu death rates are 835% higher than in Mukono. Meanwhile, the study also found that almost 12% of the population of Gulu died from injury death since the war began in 1985. The study concluded that incidences of injury death have long surpassed the international threshold of 3% that normally triggers automatic alarm in the international community. The bombshell in the study was the stark prediction that in a few years time, war-traumatised children in Gulu will exhibit the same tendencies toward violence as Kosovo children. In other words, long after the war in the north is a distant echo, many children who are now the walking wounded will become ticking time-bombs in adulthood. They will turn into the next generation of warriors ready to do unto others what was done to them-kill at the drop of a pin and not worry about it, loot, maim and rape. That's what they experienced growing up and that's what they will dish out to others when they are grown up. Those images of violent teenagers prowling towns and villages in northern Uganda pull me away from the little worries about basketball nets and the school boundary.

Compared to the challenge facing educators in northern Uganda, the problems in my school are minuscule, just minor issues to be sorted out at some point. Nobody will die if we do not get those basketball nets or skipping ropes or the benches that students want installed in the yard. The northern problem, though, is real enough to require the attention of every well meaning Ugandan because, for better or worse, these children are going to make themselves be heard somehow very soon, and when they do, it will come as a big shock to everyone. That's the problem-there is not enough discussion about what is happening to the children in northern Uganda. The government is not talking enough about it, and certainly not providing enough resources for education and counselling. The media only talk about these children when something dramatic happens such as when a child is blown away by a landmine, kidnapped or killed violently. The people of Acholi who truly care about these children no longer talk about them because nobody listens anyway.

There is a wall of silence surrounding the children currently experiencing war ― it's as if they are non-existent ghosts. They are the children of the living dead.

Yet, it need not be like that-there are many things that must be put in place especially educational infrastructure to care for the needs of these children. I do not buy the spurious argument that we need to wait until the end of the war in order to do something for them. That's the losing argument, full of holes. One good starting point is to extend tuition-free education to children from affected areas from primary to university, and post-secondary technical schools. Moreover, there are real needs to implement technical programs that enable those with talents for trades skills such as wood-working, auto mechanic, tailoring, masonry etc to get the education they need. Of course, this must be done in conjunction with a lot of counselling to help the children work through their emotional scars. The one thing that is not an option is to bury our collective heads in the sand, hoping that the problem will go away. It won't - I know it.

Opiyo Oloya
15 September 2004

 

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